


Savreth

by Recidiva



Series: Fracture Planes and Hot Chocolate [6]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Romance, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Smut, explicit - Freeform, nonconsent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 19:25:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15492972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recidiva/pseuds/Recidiva
Summary: This is an inadvisedly darkly romantic alternate universe of my Mass Effect piece "Of Kittens and Broken Things" after Chapter 13 that became "Broken Thing" and now I'm splitting off from that after Chapter 1 because my hand slipped for a month or so. Spoiler alerts for both of those pieces. Read "Of Kittens and Broken Things" up to Chapter 13 and "Broken Thing" up through Chapter 1 to understand the plot setup for this.You can read it without reading those, but there might be a big percentage of clueless "What is going on here?" that may or may not be relieved by reading those pieces. Senar and Cara live in the 'what is going on here?' space.There's terminology, lore and mythology from other pieces of my work describing Thane's background so I'll put some setup spoilers and new/old words in the notes.This is the result of Senar rapping "shave and a haircut" on my brain's door for a while with me unwilling to give the final two knocks until he had come up with something really good to justify my hand slipping. Again.Here's a word from "Delicate Subject" that does not show up in this story except in spirit. Turian word - Invas'nam - A truth held so close to the heart that the tongue cannot reach.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers/Setup:
> 
> The first person narrator is Cara Fanning, the Shepard from "Of Kittens and Broken Things." She's ridiculously, loyally, painfully and permanently in love with Garrus Vakarian, who loves her back and became the Turian Councilor with her help. He bonded to her (in my world, that is a permanent, chemical choice, irreversible) the day he found out she had been resurrected, thus freaking her out because it placed Shepard's mission at risk and he wanted to be back on the Normandy immediately. She wouldn't let him. He was dutiful and long suffering and noble and... Okay. I love Garrus. Check. They were working out the details of their complicated relationship - which does actually get worked out in "Kittens" but this goes AU suddenly to "Broken Thing." Enter stage sinister Thane Krios in this alternate universe, who had shot Irikah between the eyes when he first saw her, never got Kepral's Syndrome and spent his time building a criminal empire gleefully. He killed Donovan Hock and took his estate on Beckenstein. He abducted Cara instead of assassinating her when taking a contract - the contract was in fact from the Salarian Councilor because he's an ass and Cara is a threat to his power base. Senar's moment of seeing "Siha" translated into keeping her as a slave. Yes, it sounds bad, in execution it's much worse. He's evil. Not understating this. Bad. Guy. 
> 
> Rapist. Narcissist. Selfish.
> 
> Not stupid.
> 
> Recklessly romantic and in this universe, I finally let him use the word 'love' and mean it because reasons.
> 
> Senar Tuelon is Thane Krios's birth name. He. Is. A. Bad. Guy. Here, he's trying very hard not to be. 
> 
> Is it realistic?
> 
> Well, this is a game about aliens falling in love with each other and stupid bad guys named Reapers who turn people into goo to 'save' them. I think I have some leeway on the realistic front in this forum.
> 
> The premise is - what if Senar Tuelon did actually figure out what love was and had the opportunity to express it? Does he deserve the opportunity? Definitely not. Is love about 'deserving'? Also definitely not.
> 
> This is highly refined crack from questionable and unreliable sources.
> 
> I am an addict.
> 
> I am not seeking help.
> 
> Instead, I have an evil Drell poet and a tiny smiling wildly freckled woman who gives out more hugs than advice for company and I love them both.
> 
> I have established Garrus deserves all the love in the worlds in lots of places and yeah, he does.
> 
> That all three of them are still on speaking terms with me is amazing. Russ is busy glaring. Liara is rolling her eyes. Sorry, guys. You both got happy endings elsewhere? This is someone else's cathartic, blood-soaked and backhandedly therapeutic sandbox.
> 
> Glossary - caveat - I scanned fast, but the fact is that Senar has made up a lot of Drell words that I haven't necessarily written down and I write into stories now because that's the way he talks. English does not cut it for him in many ways and his words have specific meanings that I've gotten used to in my head. I may have lost track of a word or two, send me a comment with a question, I'll clarify.
> 
> Ahm, dolas - Drell phrase for 'yes, please.'
> 
> Drala'fa - Drell word for 'the unseen' and Thane Krios's chosen pseudonym for Cara Fanning/Lal Shepard in her disguised captivity.
> 
> Ka ras - Drell words meaning I love you.
> 
> Ssah - Drell word of comfort, comparable to the human corollary 'shhhh' but only spoken in consoling terms. Literal translation dependent on context, from 'I understand' to 'it's okay' to 'don't cry.'
> 
> Kar ive'las - "You speak the words of truth" - Drell words originating in "Delicate Subject."
> 
> Pon-Ifa - A game I made up, Drell corollary to chess, but much more intricate and complicated, comprised of several boards. Cara Fanning always kicks Senar Tuelon's ass at Pon-Ifa in any universe (well, okay, except for one that's unpublished, but she was seven years old and he had a time machine and I might or might not get to that later.) That's not the only reason he loves the hell out of her, but it's a big one.

"If I wanted to, I could do anything right.  
I could dance with the devil on a Saturday night.  
If I wanted to, I could turn matches to gold,  
smoke, drink, swear, and I would never grow old.  
I wouldn't have to be in love with you.  
If I only wanted to."

"If I Wanted To" - Melissa Etheridge

An Omni-Tool alert from Senar sliced through her enervated time-looped hell. The sound of his voice was a shock, but not much of one considering the bigger picture. Her world had already disintegrated. There was no goal, structure or plan remaining for him to topple as she huddled and choked through the impenetrable, poisoned sandstorm that had engulfed her life and mission. 

She imagined he would be disappointed he had so little effect on her. 

She was relieved it was true.

“Savreth, I mourn your loss. At the news I found my accommodations no longer suitable. I wish to honor your grief in person.”

Senar Tuelon setting foot on the Normandy was not something she could hold in her head except to think it didn't matter. He didn't matter. She didn't matter. 

She thought with fatalistic acceptance, understanding his code ‘As you wish, Senar.‘ 

Savreth. A Drell word roughly translatable to ‘Lady of Grief.’ Traditional Drell mourning garb was in the shades of sand and silence. A Savreth was a woman who donned funeral clothing and then did not acknowledge solace or survival, falling into tu’fira in order to join her love at the Shores, wearing a shroud that matched her beloved’s. 

The Drell way to die from a broken heart. 

Senar was good with names. 

He was letting her know he had opted out of his incarceration. It had never been anything but voluntary, though C-Sec had not been informed of that by him and she certainly had not warned them. He had told her that if she did not require his death, he would provide her with peace of mind. He would turn himself in for her convenience and as a result he would have a permanent, monitored address and she need not worry that he was doing unseen harm. He wished to atone for his sins. He had told her “In this way, if you find you have need of me, I will be available.”

On the surface it was solicitous. In deeper layers it was backward proof of his attempts to be more honest. He had given her fair warning that his end game was for her to have need of him.

She didn't want to go anywhere near that game.

Why hadn’t she killed him? That was complicated. The only objective facts to work with were ugly. Analysis of subjective factors revealed only smoke that might conceal something or might be the only substance.

She was alive because he wanted her and that was a solid truth. The more ephemeral and unstable potential was that she was free because he loved her.

Or he was determined to win his game, fully dedicated, uncaring about the galaxy and rolling the dice because he couldn't win if he didn't play. As a narcissist with a cruel sense of whimsy he would find it a worthy challenge to convince her to place her mission at risk for him, to grant him trust because she wanted to. He had warned her repeatedly that he didn't deserve her trust and she shouldn't give it. If he wasn't dead yet, he would exploit her weaknesses. She would make or had already made critical errors and the inevitable game was playing out as she feared and he savored each move. Game won, he could kill or use her as his cruel whimsy demanded, after he had secured his trophy and she presented no further challenge. 

He dared her to kill him or have need of him. 

He was probably alive because of her tendency to champion lost causes. 

It didn't really matter now. Her causes were all lost, her strategy fatally flawed, her mind used up and unable to guide her will, her heart shredded to ragged strips that could no longer direct or hold her blood. 

Garrus’s time as Councilor had been voluntary. For her.

She had killed him.

Her eyes squeezed shut as tears burned with acid regret along salt-scoured skin. She didn’t feel venom-compelled to allow Senar to attend her Savreth vigil. She knew that as part of compulsion she could forget that she was compelled or be convinced there was no compulsion, but even knowing that was possible she believed that when he had set her free he had released her from all conditioning and triggered commands as he had promised.

There was no real way to know. 

Her new name of ‘Savreth’ and his insistence on presenting himself indicated he knew she was not in her right mind and therefore not her right will. He had determined she had need of him and he would make himself available. He was on a search and rescue mission and would not allow her to hold him off or hide. She knew he would die trying if she told him no. 

She didn't want him here, but when presented with his encoded ultimatum she wanted no more death. 

What she wanted no longer mattered.

She should have learned not to trust him, but she found her heart leaning the other way to her horror. She believed Senar’s condolence to be genuine and knew his concern as telegraphed by her new name was justified. He felt it was justified enough to risk his life in an escape and then again to her potential wrath, grief and suspicion. 

She had wanted him to get on with his life, but he had insisted upon getting on with her life and from that he would not be dissuaded.

In the meantime she had managed to destroy her mission and plunge the Council to chaos.

Two days ago she had sent Garrus to negotiate directly with the Salarian Dalatrass regarding military and scientific commitments to the fight and he had never returned. She had watched him die. The Ferox had been torn apart by Reaper forces near the Sur’Kesh system’s Mass Effect gate. Hemorus and Liara had been with him on the ship and they had died with him. Cara didn’t need to play Garrus’s final message again to hear it and feel it. It was 12.7 seconds long. His eyes had conveyed his love in frantic blue fire as Mass Effect plasma flared around him and metal screeched. He had used those seconds to say “Cara. I love you, I always have.  
Don’t -” Then there were the viscerally familiar sights and sounds of a ship opening and emptying into space, his arm and Omni-Tool camera flung into tumbling, shearing and melting chaos. Then there was only static. 

She tried to think about barring Senar’s entry, but that didn’t seem necessary, real or possible. There was a dreamlike inevitability to his visit, promising a potential flood, pressure that would wash her from the bottleneck that trapped her. She didn’t know if she was saying ‘yes’ because she wanted to kill him. She didn’t feel violent, but when she wasn’t immersed in the horrified continuum of replaying those seconds in her mind she was restraining herself from suicide. She was driven to panic by the pain and prone to grief-blinded impulsivity. She was barely managing to continue to breathe. Every action or plan she tried to formulate was too painful to consider. Right now she only knew how to hide, hold still, try to do no harm, to at least not make it worse. 

It could be worse for her. It could be worse for other people.

As for his visit, she was in default, passive acceptance because she didn’t have the energy to prevent his arrival and bear the consequences of that. He might kill her crew to reach her.

Her will and mission and life were of no value to herself, she had no impulses to defend them and was drawn to the idea of losing them. The thought was comforting. 

She could join Garrus and this nightmare would be over. 

What suddenly felt most ‘right’ was the possibility that Senar would kill her out of mercy because he understood how much pain she was in, like shooting a horse with shattered legs who was struggling to rise. He owed her a debt, she had need, she could ask him. Maybe he was coming here to do it without her having to ask because he knew she needed that. Drell could choose their tu’fira, but she was human and all she saw was Garrus’s death. She tried to remember what Garrus looked like when he was laughing, but electronic static was the only sound she could find in her mind and then she was spinning with the smoke, with the SR1, with venom, with him. 

It had been the middle of her night when Garrus’s alert had woken her. She hadn't said anything to him, giving him at his death the only thing she’d had to give since she’d been taken; nothing. She had been stunned and horrified, unable to do anything but stare and try to understand that she wasn’t dreaming. Afterward when she realized it had been real and had verified that the Ferox had been destroyed, it seemed that for her it would always be the middle of the night and there were only 12.7 seconds of time that were important. Everything she tried to think or feel vaporized to smoke and static. She had stayed in bed except for the few times she’d mechanically stumbled to the bathroom with exaggerated care, forcing herself to look at the floor only. She had managed to walk and hadn’t ended up crawling. She wanted to crawl. She wanted to stop moving entirely but she had informed herself that Garrus Vakarian’s bondmate did not crawl, that he deserved a better woman and she needed to be one. The cabin offered alluring, lethal possibility when she considered it. The previously innocent fish tank now provided images of broken glass and blood when it caught and held her eye with possibility. Ship models were potential weapons in easy reach with gleam-sharp edges. She wouldn’t need to improvise anything, there was in fact a weapons locker, but she told herself over and over that Garrus Vakarian’s bondmate did not kill herself. 

She knew he deserved better, she just didn’t think she could be better.

She had stayed in bed, kept her eyes closed and didn’t move. She had ignored any and all attempts to contact her. She had told EDI that she didn’t need anything and to relay that information to Dr. Chakwas, making sure she sounded sane. 

Senar had overridden her Omni-Tool somehow in order to warn her that he was on his way and was not asking permission. She scrolled through the list of blocked alerts. He’d tried to reach her for the last two days, every three hours. It was best to accept his polite request for an audience. Otherwise he might drop through her ceiling soon and drug her to keep her from her own death, having convinced EDI rightly that her Commander's life was at risk. 

She sent the word ‘Yes’ in text because she doubted she could speak without her voice cracking.

It would probably take a while…

It didn’t. 

Very soon after EDI’s voice said “Commander Shepard, there is a member of the Drell Consulate requesting the right to board who states he has critical information regarding the Compact you asked him to present to you as soon as possible.”

Right. That. “Show him in.”

“To the Conference Room?”

“To my cabin.”

“Of course, Commander.”

“EDI?”

“Yes?”

Cara thought of giving EDI some sort of code or warning, then blanked on what to say. Cara was desperately hoping for a merciful death. She’d prevent that possibility if she warned EDI to make sure nobody died. She imagined that bizarre request would be enough of a red flag that EDI would consult Dr. Chakwas, they would choose to intervene on medical grounds and she’d wake up in the Med Bay, Senar having been killed trying to force entry. Then again she might wake up here, Senar having hijacked EDI somehow, the Normandy and her Commander now secure in his hold.

All the ways Senar could subvert the Normandy were implied by his impossible Omni-Tool message happening. She checked and there was no record of his message having been received or relayed. Maybe he had only activated the speaker system or any speaker in her cabin and she assumed it came from her Omni-Tool. Maybe all he needed to do would be to compromise EDI’s power supply. 

However he had done it, it was proof of concept that he had ‘practical horror’ tools at his disposal and there was a great deal he could do if she was going to double down on ‘unreasonable martyr.’

Though she didn't want him dead, she wanted to be dead enough to not care if he had an exit strategy. Him being killed or captured for causing the death of Lal Shepard was something she was willing to let happen.

She didn't want to provoke that. Escalation was not advisable. He was being relatively polite, she would like to keep it that way. 

“Nothing.”

“Of course, Commander.”

She spent a few minutes in bleary preparation sorting through stream-of-grief memories of dual-haunting blue fire composed of Garrus’s eyes and Senar’s biotics. She got out of bed and walked to the door slowly, her hand on the wall to steady herself. She was sweating and shaking from the physical and emotional effort within a few steps.

A few months into her stay on Beckenstein, Senar's plans for her had abruptly changed. After the first Gathering he had disappeared for weeks. The day of his return she had woken to modest clothing provided at her bedside and a note requesting her presence at breakfast when she felt able. She discovered that he had cleared Beckenstein of staff. He stated he had spent his time away researching Reapers and verifying her prediction of their invasion. After he had delivered eloquent apologies he had not asked or expected her to accept, he gave her an outline of his plans. He had then escorted her to a new room with a new wardrobe and provided her with an Omni-Tool and any research materials she chose. He apologized for the necessity of inflicting his company upon her further and for the request to not communicate with the outside world, but he did not trust Beckenstein’s communication network with the information that Commander Shepard was on an owner’s estate under a false identity. He was concerned that any outgoing communication to Councilor Vakarian from her that revealed her identity would provoke the Councilor’s suspicion, drive him to attempt to verify her location and rescue her, potentially creating security risks to him if he shared that information with anyone or attempted to buy information or extract her. It would simultaneously provide Beckenstein’s bureaucracy with an opportunity to claim her as property by the expedient mechanism of killing Thane Krios and seizing his estate. In his opinion those outcomes separately or together were potentially disastrous enough to counsel patience. Moving off Beckenstein without comparable security structure and access to the tools of his trade would delay or prevent her return if compromised.

He wasn't wrong. 

His intent had been to arrange for her original appearance and command to be restored as quickly as possible and to shield her from needing to disclose the true nature of her captivity. 

He had told her he would never call her Drala’fa again. He had called her ‘Commander Shepard’ only from that day. Even that name sounded like an endearment when he said it, the title ombre-shaded with admiration whose tones led to devotion and desire to her ears; the only person who knew his true name and nature. He had promised her he would remember the name he had given her and the ones he had taken away and that he would always feel the burden of what he had cost her, what he had cost Garrus and what he had cost the galaxy. He told her that his only remaining purpose was to be of service to her and her mission and if his death would best serve her purpose, he offered it. He wished to do all he could to rectify the damage he had done to her life and command. 

Senar Tuelon could and had done a lot to fulfil those promises.

He had become a solicitous roommate and bodyguard, leaving her to her bewildered, suspicious and much warmer study, blankets made of Drell cloth suddenly available on chair backs throughout the estate. 

She was able to step into the sun literally and metaphorically with no catch, no demand from him other than patience with his planning, which was something she was willing to give. She had superficially embraced his change of heart. She had been suspicious but had not expressed that as she had not wanted to undermine whatever had generated his good will. She gave him the company of a gracious and grateful woman, hoping that coin would buy her freedom or at least continued appropriate clothing with no rape, sexual display or lives threatened. Her gratitude and/or Stockholm Syndrome manifested in enjoying shared meals, conversation and Pon-Ifa games that she won. He cooked for her, he cared for her when she recuperated from surgery, he read to her. He told her stories and she had found herself no longer on guard and feeling safe despite telling herself that should not be possible.

He had kept his promises.

She hadn’t objected to his plan to go into C-Sec custody. He had negotiated solitary confinement at a safe house on the Citadel in relatively privileged conditions, one step away from Witness Protection, his alias known only to her. 

He had provided extensive intel and analysis of the structure of Beckenstein’s criminal networks, exposing weaknesses in infrastructure and personality in such a way that he was respected by C-Sec, treated as a lucky windfall and an invaluable consultant.

Many arrests had been made. C-Sec was working on turning a disturbing number of informants who made their own deals, exchanging what they knew for preferential treatment. Smuggling and slave rings were exposed and spectacularly shut down. 

Senar had meticulously constructed the cover story of her having been held as general drudge stock by slavers after her abduction on Ilium. In that version of reality Commander Shepard had spent her captivity cooking in a back kitchen of Generic Slave Central, chipped into mindless compliance but otherwise unharmed. The slavers had been unaware of her identity. There was a convincing timeline of genuine and generated surveillance of her making the equivalent of Batarian gruel with no expression. That compound had been fortuitously raided as a result of Thane Krios’s information, prompting Commander Shepard to visit him afterward and introduce herself in order to convey her thanks. 

It had been three months since he had released her and she had visited him every two weeks. She had last seen him in person nine days ago. With her visits they exchanged pleasantries, she answered his polite inquiries into her mission and health. She accepted his developed mission intel with gratitude. She watched his eyes for signs of guile and impatience. He gave her none, but she didn’t doubt his ability to sustain any appearance he wanted for the approximately 30 minutes she assigned to re-evaluating the occult workings of his will every two weeks.

She believed he was insulted by her not passionately demanding his death or pragmatically demanding his invaluable aid at her side.

She had been driven to exhausted impasse each time she tried to decide what Senar’s fate should be, pondering the likely fact that if he had not abducted her, she’d have been killed by someone less romantic. 

She already cared too much and did not want to.

Maybe now he’d deny her the mercy of death the same way she had denied it to him.

She didn't trust him. 

She didn't trust herself. 

The arrangement continued because C-Sec was benefiting and good was being done. Commander Shepard was developing and executing missions that took advantage of newly-obtained evidence of Reaper agents that had infiltrated criminal enterprise. She seized credits, materiel, personnel and intel at a gratifying pace as C-Sec coordinated with her and Senar provided his recommendations for targets. 

He didn’t hide the fact that he still wanted her, though he didn't burden her with explicit expressions of desire. He knew it was obvious to her. Explicit desire was banked in his eyes and his voice, the smoke signaling the fire, the essence of ember hoping to taste flame again someday. It was in his solicitous facilitation of her Path, in placing himself in gilded captivity whose purpose served C-Sec and Commander Shepard's mission exclusively. He had every appearance of attempting to atone for the unforgivable and now actions that carried out plans. His release of her and his offer of his life and service were now reality. 

She knew by the shape of his game that he was not willing to accept possessing only isolated parts of her. He still cherished the ambition of wanting her to give everything of herself to him freely and passionately and he would accept no less.

She insisted upon ‘No. Less.’

In practice, whatever his motives, his service and commitment were priceless assets to Shepard's mission. 

Garrus was dead and had been an ‘asset.’ Cara felt sicker at considering people to be assets, but Shepard had to think that way. 

Shepherd was killing Cara and Garrus had known it, hadn't been able to stop it, had offered his service over official and personal vehement protest.  
Senar was doing the same, except he had and still could stop her and right now she wanted to be stopped permanently, not a captive but a corpse. 

One that didn't come back.

Senar had told her at her capture that he wanted her to give herself to him. She had told him that would never happen. 

A chip and venom had not worked to secure his goal, now he was trying something new.

She was sticking with what worked. She gave him a charming and grateful woman, hoping that currency would maintain the stable but potentially volatile-if-unattended Drell explosive. In theory she was resetting the time bomb every two weeks with an investment of her private attendance and professional support. He was patient and she could exploit that, making his service to C-Sec her focus of gratitude and granting him respect. His voluntary martyrdom had to be witnessed, and by her. His fragile, newborn ‘conscience’ that was really a gambit for getting what he wanted needed to be validated, fed and nurtured if it was to have any chance of survival.

She had maintained her captivity voluntarily because he had threatened what she cared about most. He was maintaining his captivity because it provided access and a potential path to what he cared about most and along the way he was offering priceless intel and analysis. 

Poetic. 

Councilor Vakarian had given her back her command because he would never have considered any other alternative.

She had avoided Garrus because she had been broken and she hadn’t wanted to break him with any of her truths or lie to him, but that had not worked. Her death, his bond, her abduction, her silence ensured he was shattered.

She had told Garrus she loved him, that she adored him, that she wanted to be his bondmate always and only, but she couldn't. They needed to focus on the mission, they were too far behind and she could not pursue what she wanted or what he wanted now because it would condemn the galaxy to Reaping. She begged his understanding and he tried to give it, but his bond burned, banked, in bitter cold ash, having never tasted flame.  
What she had told him was completely true. What she could not tell him were the other reasons for her distance. She couldn’t risk it for so many reasons. What if her instincts were wrong and Senar had her under surveillance and compulsion? What if she were the tool Senar had planned to use to ruin Garrus? What if she told Garrus the truth and Garrus moved to kill Senar? He’d lose his Councilorship, he’d lose his life, Senar’s gambit would be revealed for the sham it was and there’d be no more reason to maintain it.

Even if Senar's attempt at redemption was genuine, his ‘conscience’ was embryonic in gestation and capacity and she did not want to risk crushing or killing it by drowning him in jealousy and uselessness and giving him more motive to move things toward his end game.

She had to give the appearance that his end game or his redemption were achievable or she had to kill him. 

She couldn't kill him any more than he could kill her. 

She could WANT to kill him. A lot.

She was certain he would accept, even wanted fervently, the right to die by her decree or hand. That was a fact, unfeigned. That commitment was part of the man himself. At his introduction he had given her timed opportunities to take his life. Now he was telling her his life was hers to take at all times for no reason, she had earned it. 

‘He is yours’ had no limits. 

He would, however, be unhappy with being made useless and then being ignored. He would also be disappointed in her if she lacked the courage to visit or treated his sacrifices as though they were meaningless to her. That was also his nature. 

She didn't want to torture him, but his captivity and loss of agency and control was torture. She imagined he would tolerate only so much of that before he changed the rules. 

But it was in his nature to endure torture.

She didn't want it to become her nature to deliver it. 

She owed him her life. 

She didn't want him to owe her anything, so she wished to be as merciful as possible. She wanted to forgive and move on. She wanted him to atone and move on. 

She blocked his Path to her surrender but she allowed for him to make redemptive gains without offering true forgiveness. He owed his redemption to others he had harmed, but it was clear he held little remorse for any of that, he only wished to gain her attention and regard. 

His redemption and her forgiveness had seemed impossible two days ago and were now irrelevant in the greater maelstrom. 

She had stalled Garrus to protect him and had stalled Senar to protect herself. 

That tactic had failed. Garrus was gone and she had bought no time for them, only wasted what time they might have had together.

Her thoughts skipped from the past to the future and she thought that if she survived this room and Senar, all she needed to do was to arrange to be as unprepared for her next mission as Garrus had been for his last one.

It would be poetic to die that way.

She suddenly wanted that outcome badly, began taking solace in that being her final death, the one that stuck. It meant she would have to endure the next few minutes, hours or days, but she deserved to be in this pain for however long it took to end her own life the way she had ended Garrus’s. She should make sure she vaporized so Senar Tuelon could not induce Miranda Lawson to bring her back with an attitude adjustment.

Within minutes of his requested audience Senar stood at her open cabin door, hands gloved and head down. He offered no pretense for potential surveillance. He did not attempt to speak of the Compact. She no longer thought it mattered, there was nothing to hide or protect. Her command was shattered, her bond mate gone, the Reaper invasion inevitable and opposition to them futile. She was an undead woman desperately seeking the hoped-for merciful end to whatever curse kept her technically alive.

He said “Savreth, I offer my life in service. My arm is yours. Your will is my guide.”

He had begun greeting her that way over breakfast on Beckenstein while holding her chair for her. It was as rote as “hello” or “good morning” now. It was a formal and formulaic Drell pleasantry comparable to ‘your servant, sir.’ It was not at all literal in common usage, floridly polite, suitable to relative strangers from different clans and different status levels, her status clearly higher than his at his insistence. The traditional response from her was given, as it had been dozens of times. “I accept your gifts. May my will be worthy of your regard.” She gave it now, toneless and unable to appreciate the irony in the exchange. His eyes lifted to hers. He looked haggard and frantic. For him, anyway. She doubted anybody else could see it through the dazzle of his composure and Consulate finery, but the depth of his concern and worry was in his eyes, in the tension of his shoulders, in how he leaned toward her and then reluctantly straightened when he remembered that she did not want him here. Being here might be a treasured goal of his; to be finally welcomed on the Normandy to Commander Shepard’s cabin, but this was not about him and he did not as yet know about her except that she was still technically alive. His expression suddenly reminded her that he knew about her and Garrus, he cared about her truth, and that expanded her cold, rigid and replaying universe to include the possibility of Garrus’s memory being honored. She had become progressively more and more burdened by the inability to memorialize her bondmate. Ironically and horrifically Senar was the only person who could do it with her. She lurched closer to him. She was going to die soon by his merciful or her inevitable hand, everything else was trivial. It was Garrus that mattered. Senar hadn’t killed Garrus, she had. Senar hadn’t kept her from being Garrus’s bondmate, she had. Sobs clawed through her throat as she choked out “I can’t breathe. I can’t BREATHE.”

His arms closed around her, blush and blue between them, his arms pulling her as close as he could, his hands holding her tight to him with one palm at her lower back and one pressing her head to his chest, his voice a blend of saturated worry and relief that made her feel understood. “Allow me be your breath, Savreth. Allow me to help.”

Lightheaded, heart pounding and sick-hoping she asked “How?”

“Venom. You do not wish to need me, but I do not see another way.”

Venom implied thinking and feeling. It wasn't the neck-snapping mercy she wanted. She rejected it immediately. “I’d be using you - I don’t - “ Her mind cracked on that having been Garrus’s last word and she was spinning into static again. 

“I do. Savreth, please. Will you allow me to take you to Dr. Chakwas and have you placed under monitored sedation?”

He knew the answer. She should. Commander Shepard would, but she was unavailable. Cara couldn’t. “No.”

“Then I will watch over you. You will eat. You will drink. You will sleep. You will heal. You will live.”

“I want to die with him.”

“Ssah, Savreth. No. We must look to a hero as our example of right action. Garrus wished to die with you but he did not. What did he do?” She shook her head against his chest, the shifting currents of pain tearing and unbearable. She couldn’t answer. He spoke for her. “He lived. He dedicated himself to your fight. Now you must dedicate yourself to his fight. That is how it must be. You cannot fail him.”

Her mouth made a sound of tangled pain, his arms a solid cage keeping her from physical harm. She knew she was safe. That triggered survivor's guilt, all the energy she had spent restraining herself released. She shouldn't be safe when Garrus was dead. Searing blame poured into her suicidal fantasies in backlash. She felt the wild possibility of quick death recede and panicked. She wanted to be in space and not on the Citadel. She wanted to step to the airlock, open it, exit and breech her suit. She wanted to discharge all the medication from her Omni-Tool directly into her system as she had over Alchera. She confessed “I can’t. It’s impossible. It’s over.” None of the awful truths they had shared were as cruel as that whisper. Her truth was that if Garrus wasn't alive, she didn't care if anyone else was alive enough to live or act that way. She had always accepted death as a consequence of her mission, now it was her mission. 

He lifted her chin to gaze into her eyes, his face expressing resolute authority. “No, Savreth, it is not. You are injured, but you will recover. Garrus would want you to live, would he not? Tell me his truth.”

Something twisted in her to deny it, but she couldn’t. “Yes.”

“By any and every means? With my venom and guidance if I am the only one able to ensure that goal?”

She felt the bleak, empty and endless horror of the path implied by the truth she gave him and the twist of the fact that he was using Garrus’s memory against her ruthlessly and deliberately in order to secure what he wanted; her still alive and him in close proximity, needed and vital to her. Senar Tuelon’s chosen names mattered. Thane Krios had only called him ‘Garrus’ mockingly. Deliberately-reformed Senar Tuelon had called him ‘Councilor Vakarian’ respectfully. He was taking Garrus’s name in vain, invoking stolen intimate confidences and manipulating her grief.

But he was right about Garrus’s memory and truth and she conceded in masochistic misery “Yes.”

“His final words to you? Tell me, Savreth. We walk on the edges of harsh truths now. Though they cut to the bone, it is the only way forward.”

“As the ship tore open around him he said ‘Cara, I love you, I always have. Don’t.’” She choked on a tortured sob and he thought she could not go on.

“Don’t what, Savreth?”

“That was his last word before the ship ruptured.”

“You witnessed his death?”

“Yes.”

His eyes closed in pain, his arms enfolded her again and he rocked her in his embrace. “Ssah, Savreth. My heart is with yours. So is his. He would have said ‘Don’t’ what? With his voice, not your grief. Say it.”

She imagined sunlit-souled, perfect, handsome Garrus saying he was just stupid enough to try to break her out of prison for her treason and end up in a cell next to hers. She remembered his messages that she never answered, where he said that whatever her reasons were he wanted to understand them. That he loved her. That he wanted to help her. That he needed her to tell him how and he would do it. That nothing would change the fact that he loved her. “He’d say - Don’t give up. Don’t regret. Don’t… don’t cry…”

“Yes. Good. Listen to him. You bear his deepest truths, Savreth. He lives in your memory, Whole. He loved you and that will always be true. Now you must honor his final wish. You may regret. You may cry. You must not give up.”

“I can’t do it anymore.”

“I can. You will. I will do what must be done until you are able. When did you last eat or drink?”

“Two days.”

“Have you changed your clothes, left this cabin?”

“No.” 

“You are Savreth and you are lost to tu’fira and he is worthy, but you must return to living. I will find you. Because it is what he would have wanted. Because it is what I want. Because I am cruel and you are precious. Kill me later if you must. For now, grant me consent. You know I will do what must be done. You allowed me here. I am still alive. You need me. You know what that means. Tell me yes.”

“Yes to what?” She was shrilly panicking internally, her surge toward relief and release cut off and she couldn't breathe physically or metaphorically give fuel to the future. No. It hurt too much, she couldn't do it. Even though he had told her no, stubborn need insisted that he was asking for consent to kill her in code. Please. He'd know and painlessly end this, he was the bad guy, he killed people. He would take responsibility for her lost horror by ruthlessly ending what he had so ruthlessly started. 

She wouldn't have to do it herself. 

Please. 

Garrus should never forgive her for giving up, for losing faith, for giving him nothing but words, for sending him to his death without him being certain of how much she loved him, for not knowing that she didn't talk because she couldn't lie but she couldn't tell the truth.

But she knew Garrus understood grief.

It slipped out in a whimper “Please kill me.”

“Never, Savreth. I could not then with a contract and the will. I cannot now with love and grief and guilt. It would not be in the service of Rightness. It would be a betrayal of you, and that I will not do.”

She believed him, the bleak, harsh corridor of time and life opening up again before her as she sagged against him, her desperate hopes for a quick and merciful end to the pain denied. The grief was at least true, authentic. Now she would have to endure false light, false face, no truth. Now she had to live long enough to plan her last 12.7 seconds. “Please help me.”

“Tell me yes, Savreth, and I will. Grant me permission to do what must be done.”

The bottleneck shattered and she surged to try to press her mouth to his, a pain-crazed and desperate addict after venom, trying to force him to admit to his lie of ‘consent.’ She wasn't capable of consent, that's why he was here. He pulled out of her frantic range, his groan of reluctant restraint inciting her to more violent attempts. He was forced to hold her back from exactly what she knew he wanted. It was perverse enough to set her on fire, determined now to break him as he had so easily broken her. He wasn't offering release or mercy. He was offering his cruelty and a forced march on broken legs. 

He spun her, her arms trapped at her sides with one of his, one hand at her throat. Her full vent of fury opened and poured like lava as he groaned, a sound she knew, a sound of being able to touch her, a sound evocative of their position, memories and the potential. She was subdued effectively, his body holding hers helpless. 

She imagined the ghost of Garrus watching them, having crossed space to reach her, arriving right now to find his wishes exploited by her true captor. A captor that somehow knew everything about him and used his name as though they were friends, as though he had the right to speak for him. The captor she had never told him about because it would include telling him about this - the position and the potential. Garrus would see that she had allowed it to happen, had been too weak to stop any of it. She imagined Garrus’s blue eyes watching them now, beginning to believe he understood something she didn't understand herself. She imagined realization of her betrayal washing through his eyes as he saw this was why he was dead, why she had been silent. This man. This moment.

Her complacency and collusion. 

Sick. 

She was sick.

Senar took a long breath-charged moment to compose thought and word, passion in every tense and hard line of his body restraining her in such a familiar way that ‘they’ were ‘themselves’ again. 

Finally.

Her fury dispelled his pretense of obedient service. She had struck at and reached the truth. She couldn't bear any more lies, that was why this room was a relative sanctuary and if he was here he had to honor truth or she would kill him. She might kill him anyway for all the truths he had created that were too vile and twisted to speak. To know them, to hear them was to be infected by them, sharing them was like delivering a rabid bite. Not speaking the truth had killed Garrus, it could kill Senar and her and that would be justice. He breathed in and she imagined his eyes closed as he felt the warmth of her, still alive and in his arms, his Spirit triumphant and soaring on the lift of powerful wings like an eagle with prey in his talons. She imagined he had thought he would be too late, that he would find her dead. She wildly wished he had. She wished she had taken some improvised, delayed poison so he could watch his desired prize froth from the mouth and fade from the eyes in his arms, having delivered her final judgment of his attempted coup and counterfeit ‘hope.’ Her ghost could have run to Garrus. They could have reunited, left Senar with only her body, the way it had started and needed to end. She and Garrus could have stayed together, living truths irrelevant, embracing forever. Instead, Senar was now in a position of power and choice. Her choices were gone and he was keeping them from her again. Once again he would compel her to live according to his rules. She wanted to turn back 12.7 seconds of measured time in series and reach the weapons locker. It would have been better if he had heard the whine of a pistol discharge when he was at her threshold, too late to seize control over her life. 

He asked her an obvious, chiding question, fueling her fury, his voice deep and near mocking but still with his substance, the clues about him she knew. He was terrified for her, trying to shock her from grief. It was working, the sensation of her pure anger infusing heat into undead flesh, painful and electric but definitely alive. “Savreth, do you wish to kill me?”

“YES.”

“After which you will kill yourself?”

“YES.”

“Then I must block your Path. I have offered to kill myself at your whim in the past, but at the moment your whim is not a wise guide. You are veiled in grief and only She speaks. You are broken, you are beaten and you must heal until you can speak with your true voice, see with your true eyes.”

“I told you. It’s over, Senar.”

“No. It is not.” He sounded desperate, pleading. His gloved hand caressed her throat and she turned into it, the answering groan from him speeding up the heat through her veins. His voice changed, the mocking gone, inevitability solid-spearing through his words. “If I could give my life to bring him back, I would. If I could give my life to spare you this grief, I would. The only time or life I can provide lies in the future, not the past. I challenge you to tell me the truth of the life you value so little. Do you believe I contributed to killing him? Is that why you allowed me here? Do you plan to avenge your bondmate and end us both?”

Senar being responsible for Garrus’s death directly had not occurred to her. She knew that she was responsible. She adopted her own mocking tone, but there was a current of bright shock-sluice, something cleaner than suspicion between them as she realized how truly guilty he felt, how much of the triumph she had imagined was not in his voice and how much he expected her wrath to manifest. “You can do a lot of things, Senar, but materializing a fleet of Reapers isn’t one of them.”

“You did not ask me if I informed the Reapers of where he would be, something you know I could do had I the will. Do you believe that I lied to you, pretended to set you free to gain your confidence and killed your bondmate when you did not choose me? Do you believe that I arrive now in order to force entry when you are most vulnerable, to take you again?”

She should believe him capable of all of that. She had believed it possible in theory just moments ago, but now she didn’t. Her head shook with an exhausted tremble, the skin of her neck seeking his caressing palm, his fingers curving to cradle her tense throat, his grazing-gloved fingertip to her pulse. “No. I know you didn’t.”

He sounded insulted and incredulous with an undercurrent of pleased. “You do? You believe there are limits to what I would do for you?”

“You’d do anything FOR me. Except kill me. You wouldn’t do certain things AT me. Not now. You’ve changed.”

“Thank you for that. Kar ive’las. You are the same since I last held you, but you are grieving and in the dark. You feel you are at the end. You need light upon your Path, you need a new piece upon your board. I can guide you and I can help you.”

She repeated in slumped defeat “I can’t breathe, then when I can breathe it hurts too much.”

“I know, Savreth. Allow me to be your breath. Allow me to bear your will while you rest. I will watch over you. You will wake fully when you are healed.”

She laughed in exhausted despair “I can’t heal, Senar, not from this.”

“It will be like the loss of limb. You will always know he is gone, but you will not always be at risk of bleeding to death each moment or resorting to suicide to escape unbearable pain. I will be your tourniquet. I will be the restraint that allows you to feel your grief but keeps your rage and pain from taking your life or the lives of your crew. When it is over you may take my life for my presumption and intrusion but give me that time. Take the opportunity to heal. I will be your anesthesia, your surgeon, your therapist. I had planned to use limited skin-touch venom, but you want and need more, Savreth, you are feral and starved of sense and survival.”

She needed the pain to stop now. He could do that. She knew he could. “Yes. Please.”

“Savreth, despite your formidable mind believing she should know better, your extraordinary heart has overruled her. You love me.”

Only truth was allowed here and now. “Yes.”

He shuddered, his body shifting at her confession, one of his hands twining with one of hers, no longer restraining her arms. “Despite every reason not to believe, you honor the love I bear for you? You are a constant miracle.” He was holding her up entirely at this point, her body having leaned back against him in panting weakness. “Say the word, Savreth. Give me control over your near-future choices. Give me two days of your life. After those days we will speak more clearly and choose our steps. The depth of your grief will be matched by the depth of my need to bring you back to yourself, Whole. You will not lose Garrus, you will not lose yourself. You are not agreeing to my company forever, only for two days. I will not grant you death, but I will shield you from the storm with all the love I bear for you, remembering your names and remembering him.”

“So you’ll be used by a grieving woman who can’t see you for who you are?”

“You see my truth. You do not trust my motives, but you know I wish for you to be alive and Whole. Savreth, you chose to send me into exile and not oblivion. That was torture but justified. You needed time to heal from what I inflicted upon you and that time was not granted by the sands before this new injury struck. With your bondmate’s death you have been denied the future reconciliation you hoped to share with him. As on Beckenstein, with changing circumstances and comprehension new plans must follow. I am not the greatest potential threat to your life. You are. When I realized I was the best hope of preventing your death and easing your torment I acted. I know you as a Whole woman and I will honor her. Find enough faith to live. Find enough faith to allow me to preserve choices you are not yet ready to make. You love me but do not trust me. My debt is great and I crave the opportunity to grant service. You owe me contempt and anger and you must pay it to be past it. I never told you I loved you when it was not true. You never told me you hated me when it was true. When my love became true, telling you of it would have done you harm. When your hate sought its voice, it was silenced by your pragmatic understanding that harming me is unwise and could provoke retribution. I have power over you, Savreth, power that I took. Power that I cannot give back any more than I could forget the moment I saw your eyes. You do not trust me that your will is your own, so I must use that power in your honor. I knew what Garrus’s death would do to you because of the knowledge of you I stole. That means I have responsibility for your wellbeing whether or not you wish it to be so. I know it to be so. You swallow the poison of your guilt willingly because you believe you deserve to suffer. I love you and it will harm you for me to speak it, but it is truth. You hate me and it will harm me to hear it, but it is truth. You deserve all the love I can give you whether or not you wish to accept. I deserve all the hate you wish to give me whether or not I wish to accept. You love me, hate me and do not trust me. I believe your love is the deepest truth and the hate and mistrust may pass if we allow it outlet. Whatever the outcome, your hate and mistrust have poisoned you and they must be granted safe passage from your grieving mind. I love you, yet I am guilty and selfish. My guilt and selfishness may not pass, Savreth, but my love is my deepest truth. We will dedicate ourselves to your healing. Will you permit me to use the word love? Do you believe I know now what it is and what it could be? Will you honor the truths I speak and grant your own?”

Her fingers squeezed his, her breath suspended “Yes.”

“I need to touch you, Savreth. Badly. You need to be touched.” He pressed her tighter to him, her back rubbing against his cock and her blush spurred not by shyness but by desire. “I am as starved for you as you are feral and I will not pretend otherwise. I hold the riches of my hopes in my arms and she loves me. You have had nothing but grief and suspicion in your bed with you for months, your extraordinary passion denied expression. Grant me the right to touch you for two days. Then I will give you back to yourself and you may Judge me then.”

“I don’t want to belong to myself. I belonged to him and now… ‘don't’” She couldn’t go into a medical coma because she couldn’t bear pretending to be someone who had never been Garrus Vakarian’s bondmate. Her ‘symptoms’ could not be explained under clinical lighting calmly, described as ‘stress’ or ‘exhaustion.’ She would have begged Miranda Lawson to find her bondmate's body and bring him back if she hadn’t witnessed him being vaporized. She couldn’t put out a cold, military and diplomatic statement of her sorrow over Councilor Vakarian’s passing because he wasn’t Councilor Vakarian to her. All she wanted to say was that he had chosen her to be his bondmate, she loved him, she had always been unworthy of him, she had killed him. If Dr. Chakwas really wanted to help, she should not put Cara in the Med Bay with access to lethal medications she would lunge for in her storm-pitched grief like she has for the oblivion of venom. 

Senar was right, she was in too much pain to think clearly and she needed help. He knew that venom and his understanding might aid her. He also knew that the Med Bay would drive Cara to lies and more despair, her grief possibly deferred but not ‘treated.’ She would wake up into the same replaying hell, fish-tank-shatter truth traded for fluorescent and clinical lies. She would be tortured, unable to be Cara, unable to be Shepard, unable to care about the way forward without Garrus. 

She could be someone else with Senar watching over her. 

He was even right about feral and extraordinary passion. Before two days ago she had spent hours each night craving Reverie and venom and hating herself, unable to sleep. 

Senar's body was protective, restraining and distinctly lustful, his voice spiced with those things, speaking Drell, knowing and expectant of her ‘right’ choice. “Kar ive’las, Savreth. The Path is cruel but we will walk it together. Tell me yes. Now.”

She knew even if she struggled or lunged, his lips would not touch her skin until she said yes. He would restrain her again, repeat his request until she complied.

She surrendered to his judgment and allowed consent to be true. Even if it wasn't true, she was broken. She had no faith, no purpose, no hope. She spoke in Drell, her shoulders sagging, “Ahm, dolas.”

Yes, please. 

He lifted her, his lips against her throat, his consoling Drell hum vibrating against her skin. He carried her to the couch and held her as her arms clutched at his shoulders, holding on desperately. He asked her in his tapestry-rich voice to breathe between her shuddering sobs. He was solid and more real than anything else had been since ‘Don’t.’

He took off his gloves. Venom and time settled the smoke with reverent and sure fingertip and lip strokes, his words spoken in near-paternal tones of dedicated caretaking. In the blur and fading glare he brought sips of silifeh juice and bites of fruit and pastry to her mouth in paced and patient succession, praising her steps toward the deferred horror of continuing to live by saying “Ahm, my love,” each time she gave in to the gently insistent venom sway that eased her pain and passed the time, each time she breathed, chewed or swallowed after his prompting. 

Between his hum and caresses her aching and trembling body melted into his, listening to every rich syllable. “You are loved. You are needed. It is your will that you live, that I live. You chose those things in the past and you have been struggling to choose them since his death or neither of us would still be alive. I will help you reach for living, but always know it was your will that brought me to you. I am yours, my venom will bring you false peace, but it will bring you no harm. It and I will shield you and then you will stand free, healed, without venom, without me, your will Whole. I will insist upon certain truths, goals and needs. You need to rest from your torment. You need the strength to fight and you must end your contemplation of what has the greatest right to kill you; your grief, your guilt, or me. Focus on what grants life and love, not what takes it. There will be no lies between us. We will face the truth together. We do not know all of truth but we will reach for her. You are brave.”

“No, I’m not.”

“The galaxy is cruel enough. Do not sing its chorus in harmony. Find your song again. Grieve for your bondmate, but remember he loved you. I ask you to love yourself.” She made a face of disgust at that notion and his lips quirked in a smile, his eyes lit with adoration. “You are expensive and difficult, my love. I have missed you.”

She twisted her disgust into self-parody “Inafer i’mae, Senar.”

“My will joins the Sand and the Path, beloved.” His hands traced the lines of her face, the paths of her freckles, the fall of her hair. “You are  
beautiful.”

She was simultaneously comforted, supported and despairing. She responded with an exasperated pout “No. You’re beautiful.” He had never put his hands on freckled skin or his lips in red hair until now. She felt a shadow of self consciousness rise, ashamed of being unable to eat, drink, sleep or change herself, stinking of stale fear, freshly carved despair and grief sweat. Then she was defiant, but that defiance was weak and didn't make its way to words. Venom was retracting the sharpest edges of pain, her psyche still sliced but the wounds not held open by twisting, rending blades. It felt as though a rib spreader was slowly being removed from her chest, anesthesia taking hold, her heart finding dark and quiet. The compulsive replay of the 12.7 seconds stopped. His lips nuzzled at her throat and she moaned, his light-spiced voice saying “Kar ive’las. I am.”

She snorted as he lifted her and she bonelessly shifted in his arms. She said confidentially in a whisper “This is wrong.”

“So very wrong.”

“I don’t know what’s right anymore.”

“You are right.”

She snorted again, resting her head on his shoulder. He stood and rocked back and forth from one leg to the other as she listened to his hum. Venom and two days of tense and horrified adrenaline crashing led her into somnolent acceptance. She whispered “I don’t want to wake up.”

“I know. Grant me my two days. Leave time to me.”

“Okay.” She was exhausted and clinging, confessing every sin, which he absolved or validated upon hearing. She indulged in what she hadn’t been able to out of his company; being a person, a woman and not a mask. He made her want to be mean, to tell ugly truths, and she had thought that was evidence of her becoming corrupted. Now she considered her vicious temper directed at him to be the spraying pressure of the opening of her real thoughts and chaotic, volatile emotions. His promise to understand that, predict and navigate it as he tried to reach equilibrium between them made sense. She had wanted to write off the debt, put it behind her, and she felt how impossible that was with love driving the constant buildup of pressure. She had been waiting for things to settle and fade, but love did not settle or fade in her. Not for Garrus. Not for Senar. 

He took her to the bathroom and dimmed the lights to dark for her. She closed her eyes. His eyes could see in this light easily. He started the shower, the air warming as steam built. In the dark she pouted. “I like baths.”

“The architecture of command has not allowed for bubble baths, I see.”

“I don’t like command.”

“You do not like command, but you need it. It needs you.”

She sighed “Okay. Just like I don't like you, but I need you. I still unambiguously like baths more than showers.”

“Hold onto that solid truth. We have a new goal we can achieve. I shall arrange for a bath for you. Later.”

“Tomorrow?”

“No, beloved. We will stay here for the next two days. Then if you wish it, I will buy whatever bath you desire in whatever location you choose.”

She sighed “Of course you kept the money. I can drown myself in my new expensive tub.”

“I am not a fool. Money is of strategic value. You have need of resources. It is your money, as I belong to you. Your bathing will now be supervised.”

“That’s probably best.”

“I believe so.”

“I don’t like ‘best’ right now.”

“I know, love.” He removed her clothing gently and she could hear the pieces being placed not in the laundry but in the trash. 

She smiled in the dark. “Fop.”

He embraced her and she shivered and relaxed in the familiar, comforting and safe hold of his arms and press of his body. He whispered in her ear in intimate teasing tones that felt like home, like the best of them together “Ragamuffin.”

She laughed and it felt good. She welcomed and then immediately resented it, saying “Where did you learn that word?”

“I had a great deal of time to dedicate to study. English can be evocative.”

“Yeah, like ‘You break it, you bought it.’”

“You are priceless and I have only borrowed you. You belong to yourself. I belong to you.”

“Did I break you?”

“Thoroughly. I brought clothes for you. Of your style, not mine.”

“Ragamuffin style?”

“Far too much cloth concealing beauty, as is your inexplicable desire.”

“Darned right it is.”

“You still choose to not swear?”

“You don't swear either. Too dignified. In my case I’d sound silly starting at this point.”

“I need your silly.” She swayed in the steam as he released her only partly, one gentle, steadying hand on her shoulder at all times. He removed his own clothing.

“Good, because that’s probably all you’re getting.”

“More than I deserve, a blessing beyond my dreams.”

She was suddenly curious and oddly coy, an impulse as incongruous as the self consciousness and the laughter, wanting to know how he felt about her, to hear it in his voice. Maybe she had it all wrong and what he was doing was his guilt and duty only. Maybe red hair and freckles weren’t to his taste. “Did you miss me?”

“I wished to die after setting you free. I could not breathe.”

“But a grieving Ragamuffin in a shower is not the same as a dreaming Drala’fa in a bath, is it? You must be disappointed.”

“You are mistaken. I am blessed. In your presence I can breathe without choking on my own poison.”

She tested her lungs “Me too. Venom and steam. Seems to work.”

“Come, Glory, take my hand.”

“Glory?”

“It is what I see in you.”

“In the dark?”

“In all light and dark.”

She took his hand and stepped into the shower, her ‘extraordinary passion’ soothed by her new name. The temperature was perfect and she leaned back against him with a sigh of expensive and difficult relief, the water on her skin and him at her back something that was in fact glorious. She accepted her new name without denial. It was a Rightness. She was no longer Savreth. She had chosen to eat and drink and despite thinking it would and should be tasteless, it had been delicious. She had removed her shroud, hot water and hard muscle contacting her skin feeling divine in their offered relief and comfort.

He had convinced her to endure. He did not demand that she pretend to like it, but he would ensure she would live.

The bondmate of Garrus Vakarian would not kill herself. 

She whispered “We’re a defiled miracle.”

“Indeed we are, Glory.”

Garrus was there, distant, like he would be if she slept and was sweet dreaming of him. He approved of her choice to live. His opinion of her company was muted, blurred, not denied but deferred. He did not want harm to come to her, he loved her, and if she needed this, it was his privilege as her bondmate to know and to provide. Venom did that, but it also sounded like Garrus's real voice, not the blame or betrayal she had been imagining. She was relieved and the ricocheting kickback of survivor's guilt shrapnel was also muted. She had become aware with the change in focus that she was mundanely hungry, thirsty, lonely and weary.

Senar agreed or disagreed with her observations, judgments and confessions deftly and they passed like the water down the drain, taking pain and pressure with them. Time began to move forward and not back. He washed her body and hair. She offered no help. She wondered if some part of her was still under the conditioning of knowing his will and acquiescing to it, but this felt different from compulsion. This felt like surrender from her and service from him, chosen together.

She hadn't been able to shower on her own. She had known she’d kneel down and then fall on the tile, stay there until the water ran cold and never stand. She’d order EDI in a dull tone to let her stay there.

Would EDI let her die?

Probably not. Senar wanted to stay here because EDI wouldn’t let her die.

Sneaky.

She observed “EDI won’t let me die. You’re sneaky.”

“If I were certain of that, Glory, I would not be here. I have too much faith in your innovation. If you chose to you could arrange for death in a way she could not prevent, sudden or insidious. Yet EDI likely would not allow me to carry her unconscious Commander away.”

“Aaah. Trust, but verify. Wise. Thank you.”

“You are welcome, love.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I am not.”

“You shouldn’t have to serve.”

“I wish to, just as you wish to be a martyr.”

“Mmm. Now I’m sorry about that.”

“As am I. About the pain you feel, not the opportunity presented by that pain.”

“This suits you?”

“Perhaps not as much as the prospect of you replete with pleasure in a bathtub, but it is my nature to appreciate defiled miracles.”

“I suppose they are the only miracles you have ever experienced.”

“Kar ive’las, my Glory. I need you in order to make miracles clearer, cleaner things.”

As soon as the water began to cool he lifted her, swathed her in every towel available. They were thin and scratchy and clearly unacceptable to him based upon the disgusted sounds he made while handling the cloth. “I will order towels and have them delivered.”

“That’s a priority? Really?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t have those in your bag?”

“In my haste I did not plan sufficiently.”

She said deadpan “Gasp.” She couldn’t see, but she decided he was smiling. “Okay. Orange.”

“Never.”

She giggled and he laughed “All right. Your two days of authority includes power over color choices.”

“Thank the Gods.”

She considered how his tactic of offering baths and towels implied the future casually on a subject she could consider without cringing. “How long since you’ve slept, Senar?”

“Two days.”

He had arranged a prison break - actually, that had probably been worked out before he turned himself in - but he had arranged for that, inventory and the ruination of his long game in two days. She promised him “I won’t kill you in your sleep.”

“My thanks, Glory.”

There was hesitation in his recitation and she asked “What?”

“Glory is not your name. I cannot find it.”

“I’m not glorious?”

“You are, but each name I find for you is not enough. Glory is part of you, but not your Whole.”

“Especially not now.”

He gave a solemn but long-suffering Drell sigh likely for her human inability to remember his love, passing over yet another chiding reminder of her value and choosing to apologize for his failure to inspire her “Forgive me for not knowing your name.”

She smiled at his discreet Drell frustration with human and her and teased, embracing her part as crass poetry-trampler “You could call me ‘Inept Savreth’?”

“No.”

“It’s true, but I suppose unromantic.”

He carried her out, lights dimmed but not full dark in the cabin. He eased her into Drell cloth pajamas in shimmering gold. She asked idly “Inspired by my hair?”

“By the sparks of Beckenstein’s sunlight in your hair, yes.”

“Now that’s romantic. How ‘bout you call me Sparky?”

“Never.”

“Maybe you can’t find my name because you already gave it to me and then took it away.”

“I told you I would not use it.”

“Maybe you should. It’s the truth. I’m not seen. I won’t be seen. By anyone. Not even by my bondmate. That’s how you wanted it.” He let out a small hiss of pain, setting her on her feet beside the bed, his hand to the side of her face as his tortured expression sought the truth in hers.

Glory wasn't her full name and she was telling the truth but only his part of it. She had been Drala'fa by choice for a lifetime. Her parents didn't know about her synesthesia, Shepard was a mask, Garrus’s chosen bond, something she had desperately wanted for herself, denied. Senar knew it but didn't say it, passing some test of not being opportunistically cruel in the name of truth as she continued despite or because of his distress “What was my name when you couldn’t breathe, Senar? When you thought of me in your self-imposed prison? When you gave up everything, except of course for the money and the hope that I’d need you someday? When you waited for me to come find you? When I left without taking you with me or offering you any future hope of that? When you realized you loved me, what did you think to yourself? What did you want to say to my back, to the door I closed behind me, knowing it wouldn't make me turn around if you said it? ‘I love you, Cara’? ‘I love you, Commander Shepard’? or ‘I love you, Drala’fa’?”

He blinked, double, slowly, the hand cupping her jaw tightening and lifting her face to look up at him as he stepped closer, his eyes ruthlessly honest. She saw pain and longing etched in adamant hope and regret. She felt them all to be true, but he could convince her of anything. Unfortunately she admired him either way. Even if it wasn’t true, the talent or devotion it would take to look that true was extraordinary. She did not want to trust in the former or admit to the latter. Mixed in with his expression was the irony that the limitless nature of his resolve and lies ensured that trust was a near impossibility. He had faith in her capacity to sort his lie from his truth, or he was bolstering her faith In her own perception while manipulating it. She did not want to know certain truths. He said “I thought, desperately, pleading to your serene-false eyes, your back and to the Sands behind, beneath and before me ‘I love you, Drala’fa.’”

She felt her eyebrows draw together in empathetic reaction, convinced because of and despite herself. Not just that he loved her, but that Drala'fa was her name to him and always would be. There was a way his voice moved, a way his body moved when he was touching truth, as though Hanar puppet strings went slack and he was himself. He was still jointed, his lines and form determined by his materials and training, but something moved him internally and not externally. There was substance to his style. He became the potential person and not a finished product. When his Spirit invested his thoughts and actions there was a purity to him that was a counterpoint to his poise. His hand would curve and it wasn’t the studied positioning of his training to kill but the devoted caress of a lover. His eyes would warm and he risked vulnerability. His body and muscles would break out of stylized, ideal perfection and become spontaneous, taking what were to him unbearable risks with a new sort of courage. He became a technically perfect dancer breaking out of classical choreography when inspired by her music. It resulted in a metaphoric and literal shift in balance as he leaned toward her physically, intellectually or emotionally, defying his training of distance and boundary and seeking shared space, knowing she could yank him off center with that and he would lose everything.

They were tiny, tiny movements and changes that screamed to her that she knew him and he was not lying.

She found it hard to believe that she might potentially believe him because he had so much better muscle control than she thought.

Extending that thought, muscle control might be the foundation of the whole ‘attraction’ thing.

Given a moment to consider her ideas of attraction, she felt that her love of Garrus was clean, easy and she didn’t have to ask why she loved him.

And even then, Cara, it had a lot to do with muscle control. The way he lifted you off the floor, the way he held you, the way he kissed you.

She considered that she was an intensely shallow person.

Then something else said ‘Isn’t that like loving your father’s bread because it granted life and it was delicious? You should want flour and water instead, insist on eating glue because it’s simple and you can understand it?’

Maybe Senar had been right in many ways as he had advocated for her to take more for herself. It wasn’t about ‘understanding’ it was about wanting to be like everyone else, trying to fit in, trying to be Shepard, hiding and not pursuing the extraordinary except in secret.

Thane Krios had told her helpfully “Drala’fa, I was able to take you because you considered yourself to be an ordinary woman who could walk down a street anonymously. You were simultaneously ignorant of the risks to you personally and to the ordinary. There is value to understanding coveting as a motivation. You do not allow it in yourself, you have not learned its lessons, you cannot predict it in others. You are strategically brilliant yet blind to invasion from darker boards because your idealism has kept you from gathering experience and understanding to guide your strategy. You tragically undervalue yourself. You are more valuable than any human I have ever met, likely of more value than the entire living race. You are of more value than any living Drell I have met, including me. I wanted you, I took you, I discovered you to be beyond the worth of the galaxy you failed to save. Here I am with all the resources I require and a game I can win, a prize without price in your attendance. My ambitions are held within this estate. Your ambitions include a galaxy. How will you have the resources you require for such an expansive game if you will not take them? How do you plan to protect your resources if you have not learned to protect yourself? How would you guard from someone like me taking what you gather as you fail to predict their incursion? Perhaps you only seek to save living creatures because you idealize them and if you met most of them, you would want to kill them as much as you wish to kill me. Your goal, your motivation and your process are idealistically driven, resulting in your death, your abduction and your inability to change your strategic course. I believe I did you a favor in taking you. Although my motivations are vile, the results are an unexpected greater good in preserving your life, which is objectively and subjectively of infinite value and a force of good. Idealistic good, yes, but I will grant you your due.”

And now she was exhausted again in the consideration of what was going on.

She tried to counter the unwanted empathy with what concerned her, not what concerned him by asking “Did you hate me as I left you behind? Did you want to hurt me as much as I seem to want to hurt you right now? I don’t want… to want to hurt you. I don’t want to want anything at all.”

“No. I hated myself. I deserved death. I deserved to be left behind. I treasured each moment in your presence and spun dreams of you when you were gone. I despaired, I could not breathe, I did not wish to live without your presence, but I do not hate you and I would not ruin the blessing of your visits by coloring them with my vanity. I have poisoned memories of you enough, new memories are precious.” He stepped back and held up his hands in beseeching emphasis. “Beloved, it is not hyperbole to say your life may depend upon you extending truce and forgiveness temporarily. We cannot proceed without it, and only with it can I ever earn trust.”

She was absolutely not ready to forgive, though she agreed with him that he needed it, and under the circumstances probably so did she. He knew she wanted him, but deeper truth revealed strata of need. If she was going to live, could she survive darker boards without his guidance? “In your spun dreams did you imagine black hair and violet eyes or sparks and green?”

“I abandoned my memories of black hair and violet eyes when I abandoned being the man that brought them into being. I was blessed by the sun in your hair at Beckenstein and your eyes over the Pon-Ifa board. I cherished the restoration of your appearance. Only the woman of green eyes chose to visit me. I recall her gaze and gifts, the only ones given freely.”

“Freely is debatable, I went from hell to purgatory. I had to buy my way out of both with good behavior. Through it all I couldn’t speak to my bond mate. Because of you.”

“You are incapable of anything but good behavior. And yes, you could not speak to him because of me. I was not a threat to him, but I could not prove that to you.”

“And the galaxy is doomed.”

“Every 50,000 years.”

“And our problems amount to exactly nothing next to that.”

“Not nothing. Your problems reflect the state of the galaxy, your ability to solve them will determine if there is salvation to be gained by those who face Reaping without your intervention. Thinking otherwise is a distraction from the greater fight. Despair and fear are the Reapers' most effective weapons. Do not allow them to strike at your heart.”

“The fight isn’t worth the suffering. It’s over. I can’t stop it.”

“You have not yet determined how, that does not mean you cannot do it. You are afflicted with grief and she clouds your vision and faith. I will not allow you to give up.”

She wanted to spit that he had caused her grief, how could she possibly trust him to fix it, but wasn’t that what atonement was? As a Pon-Ifa player how could she fail to appreciate his mastery? She was inevitably taking steps toward a goal she inherently rejected - Senar Tuelon being forgiven as Garrus Vakarian was efficiently and effectively ‘grieved for’ like a checklist item. Each step was the best move she could make, she made it, but it was still all wrong. She compromised and lost too much and she would lose herself on the way. She briefly thought - isn't that what a fight is? Making sacrifices? Aren't you willing to sacrifice yourself for the galaxy? 

Not today she wasn't. “So now you take my will again and the woman I wanted to be, the woman who loved Garrus Vakarian and had hope is gone, and what remains is… Drala’fa. Gold sparks and pain and a perfectly tailored name that will always suit any occasion.” She came up short as she realized her voice had tripped, ripped and dripped meaning on the words ‘gold sparks.’ 

She looked no doubt transparently dismayed at her mistake, giving him more than he needed to figure out what that meant. His expression altered and shifted as he considered her. Incredulous comprehension lit his eyes as his mouth tilted into a knowing smile on one side. Cold shivered down her spine at what she’d just given him. 

He had already known she loved him.

He hadn’t known this.

Turned out she still had something to lose and with it, a painful but alive feeling that something could be gained once she saw his reaction to her truth. His hands moved to cradle her jawline on either side of her face, palms along her throat, caressing thumbs along her cheekbones. There was tingling warmth on her skin, vibrant sparks of sensation racing through her body from overset vertigo, her internal shrinking ice colliding with his radiant heat.

She felt herself melting, giving way and collapsing.

His smile deepened as he gazed at her for a long time and took in what he saw in her eyes, savoring the moment before he said “Tell me your truth, Drala’fa. That is your name if you claim it. I am grateful you demand my truth, that I need not seal my lips against speaking my flawed heart. You already know what is important, what will not change amid all the chaos. As for your beautiful defiled-miracle green eyes, do they now see gold sparks surrounding me?”

Her mouth twisted and she spat angrily “Yes. Maybe I should call you Sparky.”

He asked in entranced wonder, ignoring her anger “When did this miracle occur, Drala’fa?”

“When I opened my eyes after my final surgery. You were reading to me.” It probably should have been “The Taming of the Shrew” but it had been “Jane Eyre.” Had he come to wive it wealthily in Padua or was he a blinded man in the seared and broken ruin of his choices? 

Her brain said ‘both’ and her brain wanted to tell her brain to shut up.

His smile indicated that he was thrilled and she wanted to kick him in the shin. He had always taken clear and perversely innocent joy in celebrating a successful hunt as unambiguous good. Thane Krios had not needed to lie to his Drala'fa other than recreationally, savoring the freedom of not having to hide in any way in her presence, safe from consequence because she would not risk what he threatened. His satisfaction in his accomplishments had been relayed to her as though she were in fact the lady of the house and she should be as proud of his day’s work as he was to present it to her, as if to say “I contributed to the murder of no less than seven people today, excellent form, you would have enjoyed the spectacle. I undermined at least two planetary governments and next week I shall topple a Democracy. It is a pleasure to see you, I cannot wait to rape you repeatedly this evening and into the night, you cannot know how much that pleases me, but I shall describe it to you, as always. How was your day being helplessly coerced into degraded submission? Good, I trust? Excellent. Be a lamb and tell me every single thought that passed through your head today, I am as always curious about your escape plans. Your thoughts of how to kill me are indispensable foreplay I must make time to savor, a highlight of my now-blessed days and I have you to thank for that.”

Thane Krios had welcomed Drala’fa’s spontaneous declarations of love gratefully, reverently and joyously, telling her he adored her, no shadow of regret anywhere in his eyes, voice or body.

She knew it was fruit of the poisoned tree, all he truly knew was that he desired that fruit beyond reckoning and if it was permanently poisoned it would not stop him from taking a bite. He was not only willing but determined to die for it, for her.

But maybe they could remove the poison with her consent. Just as he moved when his strings were slack, so had she moved on her own as Drala’fa.

It seemed Senar Tuelon’s unguarded dedication to truth looked eerily the same; context-free celebration as he realized she would not have considered killing him after waking up looking like herself again, that she loved him and she trusted him to understand her. That she understood him despite his poison. 

He was joyous and without shame.

He should have some shame.

She didn’t want to be shallow enough to want him because he was handsome, but the man was handsome, no way around it. Her stomach lurched, butterflies and fear and some backchannel hope that the joy on his face reflected a possible future and not only the end of a hunt.

Please let this be a door opening and not a trap closing.

Please.

Her brain echoed again - ‘both.’

He was the practical horror of a kitten disemboweling a mouse, delicately licking blood from his whiskers in warm sunshine, nonchalantly replete and self satisfied, forgetting she was the mouse or presenting her with mangled, blood-spattered trophies he had required she watch him toy with before killing for no reason other than to present them to her. He was telling the truth all wrong, seeing the truth all wrong, the nature of a creature born and bred to hunt. Her reaction to it was all wrong. She felt not repelled, but attracted, responsible for him, intimately entangled and wanting to dangle herself in front of him to distract him from destroying the galaxy, to use his extraordinary potential in other ways. The nature of a woman born and bred to utilize resources with a side order of unreasonable martyr. He was handsome, intelligent, charming and accomplished and Drala'fa had always considered herself lucky and blessed. 

She tried to think of Drala'fa’s mind and remembered something buried in the dream. It was hazy and layered, gradients of her priming barely perceptible in tiers. Fully lucid she had been aware of her prison and its merciless keeper and lethal limitations. In envenomed company she was aware there were appearances to be maintained. But those appearances shifted and slid when she tried to reach for them. On the throne she had been… blissful. In their bed, privately she had been joyous, loving and free in ways that were impossible. She began to grasp that it hadn’t been simple conquest but incredibly delicate and perceptive hijacking. 

Of both of them. 

He had hijacked her and then allowed, if not welcomed her hijacking him when he realized that was her nature.

He had convinced her that she had chosen him, chosen each aspect of their life together. He had been her trophy, not the other way around. In their venom-rapt, private time together her status, rank and entitlement had evolved into being higher than his by right and merit. As for how they met, he had convinced her that he had charmed and partnered with her at a party, the sort of party he later arranged monthly to please her. She had billions of credits she had earned through technical patent and sought to engage her mind and body in the best pastimes available. Her impression of him was that he was… pretty. Intelligent, yes, but of course nobody could match her brilliance and she did not expect him to. They had dazzled the crowd, found each other to be all that could be desired, left together and never parted. She had granted him the right to please her each day. She had required it, knowing he would say yes. Drala’fa believed it was her estate, her money, her chosen clothes, her Senar, her exhibitionist sexual appetites. 

Blinking in disorientation, ruthlessly honest in this place and time that required it, they were all true. 

She had never embraced certain aspects of offered sexuality just as she had never embraced alcohol or meat, but what she had embraced was… 

Oh. 

She knew he served her whims, managed her resources in business and investment, set her free to pursue study and rich pleasures he brought to her one by one in supplicant hands, offering her new surprises and favored standards. Drala'fa knew that ‘as you wish’ was his law. She was in fact the Queen at her Hamlet, in her chosen, humble costume, escaping the drudgery and mundane realities of maintenance of a fortune and social obligations that bored her. She created and chose a new identity and appearance, with him as her front man but her name on all ownership deeds. She was able to disappear and start over on Beckenstein where her whim was literal law in order to indulge in the best of the best in all things without unpleasantness in her day in the form of unwanted responsibility.

Thane Krios had wanted her to think, to know, she was in charge, and it had succeeded. 

She had felt like a Goddess. She had had no trouble knowing she was brilliant, and from there had no trouble believing she was transcendently beautiful physically and spiritually. She had embraced quiet study and time spent with her loving, protective… family. 

She had been… demanding.

He had ultimately set her loose on her playground, and Thane Krios's demands for sex had been eclipsed by Drala'fa's need.

He knew her without strings, hungry and joyous and he knew her when she was needy-feral and greedy. 

That's who he wanted, and Drala'fa was not a lie. 

He idealized her as Whole, and he did not want her only for her love, but for her unashamed hunger and need, more than a match to his own. 

She realized he envisioned a future with no poison between them because he could give her that without reservation now and she was free to take it and choose the nature of his service. 

He had made it all true before. He had faith they could do it again.

There was absolutely no way to convince herself - or him - that she at her roots, Cara or Drala’fa - didn’t find him devastatingly attractive. It would be like trying to convince her tongue that she did not like chocolate. One taste and her eyes rolling back in her head gave her away. Try to deny it and venom would take care of that. He didn’t have to tell her what she wanted, he KNEW what she wanted. Venom had double edges, cutting deep to create a lie or reveal the truth. 

Drala’fa had become accustomed to her whim being law. 

Her blush surged as she remembered the way he had systematically found or created her desires. He had never forced her to drink alcohol, never forced her to eat meat, never forced her to like anything she had ‘liked’ as a craving addict. He knew when he had hurt her when she was fully lucid and he had even innocently enjoyed that, the transcendent pleasure on his face and the praise from his lips obscenely profound.

He had found that her capacity for artful pain and innocent acceptance of pleasure and love made her a savant, and he learned from her. 

She had found and soothed his deeper hurts and broken nature, granting her understanding and counsel as divine balm. 

He knew when he had pleased her, turning that way in his tendencies deliberately and reaping unexpected gifts from that path. 

He had changed, she knew it, but whether he was an assassin discovering her weaknesses or a man discovering what pleased his Chosen because he wished to please her, it looked the same. He had spent the deep night hours in delighted discovery of her needs. He gave her food from his fingertips, strokes on her skin from his hands and mouth, laughter and groans, and his venom-rich voice “Tell me, Drala’fa, does this please you? Do you want more?”

Ahm, dolas. 

He had always given her more, shifting over time to spending all his effort on feeding her desires, which simultaneously fed and satisfied his own. 

Because one of her primary desires had become his happiness.

She had wanted to know what pleased him in return. He had shown her when she asked, she had found many of, them on her own and wanted to give them to him, feeling a transcendent rush of power over him, her eyes closed and her tongue… and the sounds he made… and the way he tasted…

The way he made her feel a luxurious, innocent joy, like a sated kitten in the sun…

He had told her often in his passion-play voice the message in many ways, all meaning ‘Never be ashamed, Drala’fa. Your body is Gods blessed and sacred, your Spirit Whole and your mind unfathomable as the stars. I am but a man seeking his right to worship at your altar. Hear my prayer.’

She had memories of shimmering blue perfection, suspension in bliss, blessed. 

She found him impossible to resist and it was only Shepard that had enough context to know she should kill him on sight.

That wasn’t exactly true. Shepard devoid of Cara found him strategically attractive.

He was right and Shepard saw him as pure potential she could refine into results, even his/her money, as he said, of strategic value she needed.

Cara was ashamed that she truly enjoyed the… dangling… and the fact that she could hold him, tame him, keep him when nothing and nobody else could. 

She imagined he felt the same way when she stumbled innocently into her own nature, bewildered and charmed and horrified as the attraction took hold like gravity.

She imagined his unvarnished, near eye-rolling assessment of her after he’d received the news of Garrus’s death, realizing he would have to dispel his carefully constructed myth of patience or she would perhaps not survive, would definitely suffer. “My Drala’fa will not eat, drink or sleep because she loves too much. Does she not know how selfish she is to indulge in such a frivolous, maudlin misuse of energy…?” She imagined him sighing deeply and beginning to pack, doing the equivalent of muttering “...with the galaxy at stake and my plans disrupted…” She imagined him tilting his head, possibly raising one finger to emphasize the profound truth as he thought “This I did not do to her, this she did to herself.” 

Then he had set aside his own maudlin misuse of energy in wishing things were different than they were and set himself along the razor edge of his chosen path; his desire made Whole, his Drala’fa served, or his own death.

That was always his choice; desire or death.

Why couldn’t she have picked death for once preemptively?

Was being ashamed of who she was the only thing keeping her from saving the galaxy? 

Was shame the darkness he was proposing to navigate for her? 

She hoped he hadn’t killed anyone escaping, then she was certain he hadn’t. 

Because she wouldn’t like it.

He had probably vowed to return and kill those who delayed him if that delay and her unreasonable standards cost him her life. 

She was unable to resist caring for him as he was unable to resist hunting her. He was reformed, but only in proximity to her. He had adopted limits and rules like Pon-Ifa, having learned it was the only way to play in her life, but he had no true morality of his own. He was ‘good' by rote. He needed her to set limits, to define a pool of light and boundaries that did not exist without her. If she wasn’t there, no limits, no boundaries, spreading dark. If she were there, he could look like this, a kitten playing in sunlight with joy on his face.

He was a glowing, thrumming drive core of significant power, daring her to harness him and plot a course. 

He couldn't find the light without her. She couldn't find her way in the dark without him. 

She’d always thought that evil people must be absolutely miserable, but in his case she’d discovered he had a capacity for pure delight that was transcendent and she as a good person had done a great deal of suffering and not sleeping well.

And still, nothing made sense, but she couldn’t stop looking at him and couldn’t stop wanting him and she wasn’t ignorant enough to blame the venom.

She didn’t understand how she could love him and she didn’t understand how he could love her either. 

Reality was insisting it was paradoxically true.

He looked like she had just told him she was pregnant after they had tried for years.

No doubt enthusiastically tried for years.

Like a pregnancy, now they were tied together through mutual choice and a potential future of meaning, she knew he would never let her go and he knew she would not send him away when his two days were over. 

Never mind that she was Savreth for another man, this was the headliner, the only thing that mattered. 

She loved him. Not like she loved Garrus. It was the difference between ice and steam, but it all came from the same element.

Knowing what a consummate actor he was and knowing the difference between his polish and his genuine was precious, and she did… know. She knew him. He could… save the galaxy with her… if she kept him on a very tight leash. The way he wanted it.

For a woman who hadn’t wanted to want anything an hour ago, this was all experienced as compounded whiplash she could not process. She’d eaten and she’d drank and she had chosen to live, but she couldn’t make sense of any of it, maybe she was compelled, chipped…

No. She knew what that felt like.

This was why love had confused poets and priests and the common folk for… well, forever.

It was chemistry, not math.

He hadn't caused Garrus's death, but it worked for him. She didn't think he had caused her synesthesia to betray her, but he was transparently delighted, blithely unaware of his responsibility for tragedy in the moment and only counting the riches of his inherited windfall. He spoke as though giving wrist-binding vows. “Drala’fa, your name is of the unseen and the unseeable, my name is of the undeniable. I am your Senar. It is the only name that ever mattered to me and it is yours by right. I gave it to you. You know what that gift meant. Once you took my name he became yours. Now I have your name and she is mine.”

Her expression of defiled miracle answered him and his joy didn’t fade but was tempered with understanding. “Yet that is not all, is it? Garrus no longer glowed when you saw him again, did he?”

“No. He didn’t. Did you do that?”

“No, not through compulsion or suggestion. I did not, Drala’fa. I promise you.”

She started to cry, anger draining and despair choking her voice “I did it, didn’t I? Because he let me die? Because I wouldn’t let him touch me? Because you couldn't let me die? Because I couldn’t stop you from touching me? That’s not fair, it wasn’t his fault. I don’t -” She was panicking and horrified at herself, at her synesthesia, at being here and being alive, guilty and spattered with the acid realization. Senar was celebrating over Garrus's disemboweled memory, preening, and it was her fault. He was reaching into her rib-spread chest, taking a bite of her heart and recommending she try a taste herself because she was delicious.

Senar interrupted her searing diatribe by kissing her. It was like the air and the food, the water and wishing. It was awful and she was desperate for more. He gave her his kiss until she was dazed, panting, his voice rich “Drala’fa, no. Do not blame yourself. You loved him, you wished to protect him, you felt you would harm him. You believed I would harm him if you provoked my jealousy. You chose that out of love. I know you did. Have faith in that. You love him and always will. He knew that. He loved you. That is truth. As for seeing me in gold, your gift of hope graces me, and I will honor that. We will honor that. With it, we will light our Path to victory.”

She whimpered in denial of her being associated with victory in any way.

“I cannot guarantee ultimate triumph against Reapers, Drala’fa, but I do promise to fight for you, with you, for him, with his memory. The woman who loves him is not gone, she is grieving and she doubts her inspiration, but she also loves me. Let the will of hope build in you. In two days I will ask you to honor the fact that your inspiration stays true. I have faith in you. You will have faith in yourself again. May it be the will of the Sand. May it be your will. It is mine.”

“I hate the Sand.”

He huffed a brutal laugh of contemptuous agreement, then kissed her again, hands gliding along the textures of gold-sparked cloth and hair as she closed her eyes and did not see the haunting gold aura on green and black scale, as she felt the blue flare through the fabric and her blush responded helplessly.

Drala’fa.

It was the perfect name for her, it was a Rightness and a Wrongness, a defiled miracle. When she had returned Garrus had been all Rightness and deserving of better than she could offer. She had been a poisoned addict who spurned cleaner things and maybe was in love with a monster. Senar waited in a fool’s-gold-gilt prison for his opportunity to take her again. His move of letting her go, of loving her, could have been and might be all pretense, but she believed him and drowned in guilt. She had been waiting for clarity and instead inherited death and default. The pressures of loving Garrus, loving and hating Senar, hating herself and the despair of her mission had built and Garrus’s death had torn her open. She couldn’t open her eyes, tears squeezing through, helplessness and surrender honored as Senar repeated envenoming strokes and his insistence on patience and healing. He lifted her against him, the glide and slide of their bodies together familiar in drugging heat. Her muscles, bones and will melted and conformed to his harder muscle, bone and will. He was shaking, his voice trembling as his hopes and prayers left his lips under their own pressures to be let free. 

As she kissed him back he murmured “Ahm, Drala’fa.”

As she clung to him and her tongue sought venom on her own he murmured “Ahm, Drala’fa.”

He had graphically described each sensation of his domination of her before, taunted her and informed her of each of his momentary and sustained triumphs. Now he described confession rather than domination in a way that incited her nails to dig in deeper, her tongue to seek his skin in new places. He was sweet and rich and dark, her personal embodiment of addiction and crave, all her dreams and nightmares combined.

“Ka ras, Drala’fa. Hear me. I see in your eyes and hear in your voice, in your twisted denials that you believe I made you beautiful.”

She snorted and said “Objectively true.”

He gripped her hair and twisted her head back, hissing “Stop.”

She gritted out against the pull “Or what? You'll kill me?”

He laughed and kissed her, biting at her lips and evoking moans. Her arms tightening around him. He wasn’t getting his point across, whatever that was. She didn’t care.

He wrenched his mouth from hers with a groan and she licked her lips deliberately, drawing his eyes. His eyes then narrowed and he growled but continued with his hand tight in her hair “This is the one place you are a fool, Drala’fa, the one place you believed my lies. The one place I am disappointed that you have not found truth as you so often do. You are blind to your value and you need me to remind you. I took you because you were precious, because you were beautiful, because I could not imagine possessing anything of more value.”

“You took me because you were paid.”

“Yes, I was paid, but I was paid to kill you, was I not?”

“You did kill her! I can’t be the woman you took, she’s gone! You can give me back my skin and my hair, but I’ll always be Drala’fa, my eyes drawn to you. Whatever light or inspiration she had before is gone. I killed Garrus with my inspiration. I almost killed myself. I definitely still want to kill you!”

“Listen, my lost love. You are wrong. Reapers killed Garrus because he chose to oppose them. Your light not gracing him did not make you love him less. Your light gracing me did not make you love me more. Love is your nature, Whole. Your synesthesia is a guide but not truth. You do not understand but do not blame your eyes for seeing change in need. Your eyes speak for Shepard, your heart speaks for Cara. My Drala'fa believes she speaks with my voice but that is not truth. She is free because I heard her voice. Trust yourself, my love. Garrus loved you because you were precious, beautiful and inspiring.”

“Hah. And look where that got him.”

“In love with a woman who loved him every moment she breathed and will always love him. I am certain he knew you loved him and were protecting him because that is your nature and he was wise enough to see that. You granted him purpose, pride, power and position.”

“And death.”

“A good death, Drala’fa, is all many of us can hope to achieve. With your inspiration he died a hero in the valiant fight, having fought for good since he first saw you. I admit I am jealous and wish I had seen your eyes sooner, had his opportunities and blessings.”

“Well, bang-up job on the good death. Extra bang. I saw it.”

“I do grieve for his death, Drala’fa, but you must not follow. Listen… please… to where you have always been wrong and where I have always been right. You imagine I picked a pebble from the ground and the setting I placed her in granted her worth. I chose a rare gem that could not be cut. Each time I tried I was cut myself, faceted and formed. You remain the same, Drala’fa, I am the one transformed to my bones and breath. Yes, you are poisoned and grieving but you are the same woman you have always been. Garrus bonding to you was not a mistake on his part, it was the best thing the man could have done for himself. Me taking you and keeping you was not a mistake on my part, it was the best thing I had ever done for myself. We needed you. You were, are, will be, beautiful, rare and precious. Remember that your parents did not glow. Upon your return from captivity you knew how much you loved him. I had forced that from you, defined it in excruciating detail, used it against you. It was no longer a question. Lack of synesthesia aura means you were certain of his meaning to you. Now you are uncertain of me. My artifice concealed your true worth from the world I forced you into, but never from me. You tried to protect Garrus, you even protect me from your wrath. You love, you light each room you occupy and each thought that passes through your mind. Believe Garrus’s truth. You enriched his life. You saved him from C-Sec. He would have died on the Citadel buried in obstructed doubt and helplessness during Saren’s invasion without you. You made him Councilor. You inspired him to bond to you. Did he express regret for taking you? Apologize? Or did he stand by his choice with pride and hunger?“

She was crying, his fierce expression and hand in her hair holding her still as she watched him boil over in protective and jealous fury. She couldn’t answer.

“I am a thief, but at least grant that I know the value of what I took. Not only your mind, not only your spirit, but by the Gods, Drala’fa, your body is perfection and your passion worthy of faith that you were created by Gods, human or Drell or both to be my mate. I told you I did not imagine black hair or violet eyes, and that is true, because I no longer see you by color or name in my most cherished tu’fira. I recall feeling your body, hearing your voice, my eyes closed and everything true and unchanging about you as a woman, nameless and searing, overwhelms me. My path to living lies in seeking the truth of your mind, the exquisite pleasure of your embrace and the hope in your Spirit. I know I do not deserve you. I never did and I never will, but I will not stop serving you if you grant me the opportunity. I gave up my true name and false purpose to give you back your false name and your true purpose, to place you back in your true setting and show my love and remorse, but even from that I benefitted. I gained purpose, worth and love. I know your true names. When Thane Krios held you, he knew he held the Salvation of the galaxy in his selfish grip and that thrilled him, to hold that power between his palms and have the switch to her compliance under his thumb. Senar Tuelon gained the gold sparks in your hair and the green-gold gift of your eyes by letting Lal Shepard go, yet Drala'fa remains. Drala'fa is the embodiment of our truths and lies bound and she belongs to us together. I love her. She is in and of the dark now, she has abandoned herself to her worst fears and failings. She needs me. I should offer apology, but I am proud of my audacity and wisdom in taking you and then in letting you go. I deserve to die, but before I do, I swear to you that if we are speaking truth, your false and uninformed humility does not reflect the truth of why Vakarian died carrying out your will despite deferral of your bond or why I relinquished my freedom for yours. He loved you, enough to place his entire future in your hands and hope you carried the burden forward. You love him. I love you. I value you above all things and I have always been right about that. Placing the burden of my love in your hands and hoping you carry it forward as you grant me time to prove I will be worthy of your gift is the best thing I can do with what I know, with who you are, and with who we can be together when you lend me your light, your life and your body. Me being here now will help you, but you would have found your way back to your light without me. You always walk the Path of Rightness. Allow me to walk with you, Drala'fa. Allow me to carry you, to be your strength. You haunt every waking and dreaming moment of my tortured inability to breathe when you are out of my sight. Now you are helpless, hopeless, a woman of dead eyes, as though chipped and left alone in a room to die. I know how to restore you to yourself. I will. When you doubt your beauty or allure, I must argue and insist upon truth. Not only to serve truth, but in offense that you demean all three of us with your mistaken estimation of your value. I gave my soul, my name, my life in exchange for knowing you as you are. Vakarian dedicated his breath to you when you died, his bond to you when you lived, his love to you always. Do you understand what you drove us to by simply breathing? Do you know what you do by not valuing yourself enough to realize what an irresistible temptation you are? You stumble through your lives, unguarded and blind, needing to be watched over every moment as you throw your life at unsolvable problems. You risk being killed or taken by another who sees you and knows your value. It is not to be borne. Strike me down, kill me, Drala’fa, for rejoicing as you grieve, but I promised truth. Your parents, Vakarian and I knew you were and are infinitely precious. I will oppose you when you do not see yourself as the Goddess you are. I may not understand you, but I know your beauty, your rarity and your value. I did not create a woman that I wanted, you were always the woman that I wanted. I had to change you to hide you. The most beautiful, expensive and thoughtful costume I could provide was ash and rags in contrast to you. I knew that, I told you that each day but you did not believe unless venom stripped you of your doubt and revealed the Whole woman beneath. Grant me your Body, Mind and Spirit, Whole and Broken, and we will defy the Sands together. What Fate took from us separately we will claim together. It is your nature to be light, to be hope under whatever ash and rags are forced upon you. Your mind sees me as glowing, I rejoice in Her willingness to question my worth, to not know that I am as worthless to Her as I was when you first saw me. I will not allow you to be blind. I will not allow you to give up. Give me what I need, I will give you what you need. From this day forward it is as we will it, and not as any Gods have decreed or any Reaper determines. Where is the woman in the mirror? Where is the woman who defied me each moment and restored my soul and heart with her light and hope? You are she. Always. Fight back. Fight me if necessary, kill me as I deserve for defiling your miracle, but let me sanctify your temple before you kill me. Let me set it right. I once challenged you to kill me, now I challenge you to live. Know that Garrus treasured your gifts each day and the fact that he needed more did not mean you gave him nothing. It meant he knew how much more you could be together. You would have given him everything and I would have helped you reach that day as my penance. Grant me my worth, Drala'fa, as you always have.”

She didn’t even care if he was right. He sounded right, it felt right. He was sure, and she was sure with him. Tears of gratitude crested. “Ahm, Senar.”

He growled and bit at her throat, cock throbbing against her belly, her hands straining to free them both of clothing and his hands guiding her hips to ease her writhing into a position where he could enter. She was frantic and with that he lost his patience with gentle, a savage entry stroke resulting with her driving her body harder down onto him than he’d intended, a wrenching scream from her with her head thrown back and his whole-hearted and whole-bodied acceptance of her rending welcome, heat and pain and envenomed, enveloped bliss that they both remembered, exiled from the outer worlds, at home in themselves and each other.

“Tell me you love me, Drala’fa. Look at me.”

She opened her struggling eyes and didn’t wince at the gold or the biotics or the fierce determination that invested his eyes, his hands, his voice and his body driving into hers.

She was beautiful. She saw it in his eyes, felt it in her blood, that he would demand that truth from her and from anyone else; God, Reaper or bystander every moment. She needed him to do that for her, to grant her worth when everything was dark. To wash away the ash and throw away the rags. 

Garrus wasn't to be found in ash or rags, only in hope and in the good fight. She would find him again there. She’d make him proud. The bondmate of Garrus Fanning would save the galaxy for him. 

“Ka ras, Senar.”

His eyes drifted closed in new bliss, something she hadn’t seen before, softer and sharper and an intensity searing through him as he drove her down harder. “Again, Drala’fa, say it again. I can never heard those words enough. Thousands of times I have wished to beg you to say them, my lips stopped and my heart halted. Again. Always. Tell me.”

“Ka ras, Senar.”

Then she didn't close her eyes because she didn’t want to, the fierce possessive joy on his face eclipsing both their fears and streaming certainty and life into her, knowing he was imbued with light and that she loved him. That tide swept her into acting, her hands on either side of his face, kissing him and murmuring that she loved him over and over.

“Ka ras, Senar.”

“Ahm, dolas, Drala’fa.”

That litany accompanied each thrust, gasping breath and bloom of biotics through her body inside and on the surface as he urged her into coming around him and he emptied with trembling, roaring spasm into her until they were both left shaking, staring at each other and unable to deny deep-touched truths.

She was going to live.

Damn.

Okay, maybe she was going to swear.

Inside.

She loved him.

He knew it now. All of it. She didn't have to lie to him. 

“Ka ras, Drala’fa.”

“Ahm, Senar.”

“He is yours.”

“Ahm, Senar.“


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dreams and nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some Senar lore and Drell lore here that I made up. The story of Yased and Kirinas is told in the Chapter 50 of "Delicate Subject" - Senar's favorite story as a young boy, told and retold by his father to him. Told and retold to Kolyat as a young boy. Yased was Senar's idealized hero as a child. 
> 
> +++++++++++++++
> 
> The Ti irr'aq is another mythological Drell story I made up, one of meaning to Senar as a young boy dreaming of Rakhana and what was precious about her, deserving of defending and revering. Here's the myth in his words:
> 
> “The Ti irr’aq was a story of the Shal Clan. They lived in deeper desert than other Drell and developed watercraft that was unsurpassed, allowing them to live in territory that would kill others trying to reach it or survive there. Historically they were expert at locating, building and maintaining wells and subterranean cavern gardens. Much of their true craft is lost, never disclosed, but the myth was known on every thirsty dune. They attributed their successes to their Dragon Gods, the Ti irr’aq. A Water Seeker from the Shal Clan claimed to speak the language of the Ti irr’aq. According to them, only a young Ti irr’aq during the spawning season could be seen or heard. Elder water dragons were unreachable, having found homes deep underground where they coiled around and guarded their chosen water sources. A Shal Water Seeker claimed to be able to befriend a young Ti irr’aq and entice it to carve a well, to draw water to the surface and create the space for the gardens. The dragons were relatively small and spare at spawning, perhaps the size of a sky car. They were said to grow continuously as long as the water flowed, protecting the village within its shifting and expanding coils. Impressionable and thirsty, a young Ti irr’aq could be tempted to drink venom-sweetened water and promised more if they burrowed in the sand and drew the water up to the Water Seeker. They would bond in covenant and the Water Seeker would spend their life underground in communion with the dragon, trading venom and worship for water and food. Shal settlements built elaborate walls around them that resembled the sand-scoured spines and hide of the Ti irr’aq’s back to honor that the site was dragon blessed.”

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." - William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

She surfaced through layers of horror, fire, ozone, smoke and despair, Senar’s insistent voice at her ear. “Drala’fa, wake to me.”

She was aching, wet, trembling and shiver-shattered by images she did not want to name. She remembered Thane Krios dissected her dreams one by one, fascinated and staring down at her, stroking her hair as he pared apart her history and fears with a fine scalpel and watched her bleed. 

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She did know she was a different man. She didn’t trust that he wouldn’t go back to being the same man, but she did believe he was trying to help her. She didn’t have to tell him what it was about, he knew enough and now he knew to add ‘Don’t.’

“You have granted me two days, but sleep is something you will do for a lifetime I intend to be long. You need your rest. You cannot afford nightmares. I will not allow it.”

Her head tilted back in anguish, her psyche ravaged by fear and guilt and the smoke-smeared fingerprints of her pain. Nightmares were out of his control unless she trusted him enough to compel her with venom to sleep peacefully. 

He was doing the right thing but it was not working, any more than her right thing had been working. She knew that tone of voice. The right course was about to change. She said reflexively “No,” because that’s what she had to give.

“You speak foolishness. Of what value is it to helplessly submerge in the horror of your parents’ or your bondmate’s dead bodies and hear them speak your worst fears as prophecy? Recall them when you are able to remember that they loved you and wished you no harm. They would be horrified at being the cause of your pain.”

“Can I dream of you being dead instead?” 

His mouth was at her throat as he moved from cradling her in her sleep into a position of holding her down, clearly preparing for an argument he intended to win. He sounded wistful as he considered her lack of commitment to thinking of him at all times, in all ways. “You do not do that already?”

“Not as a nightmare.”

“Perhaps someday you will.”

“Maybe in three days.”

He huffed against her throat as one of his hands slid along her hip, her waist, trailing venom up to her breast. Her toes curled and her thigh drew up to slide along his warm-textured and real, alive flank as his fingertips trapped her nipple and his palm turned. “If you outlive me, Drala’fa, I forbid you to use my image to cause yourself more pain. Remember me like this, alive and arguing with you when you seek such things. You must not hamper me in caring for you. It is unfair to ensure I fail in my goal by placing absurd and counterproductive restrictions.”

“Hearing you attempt to be an advocate for ‘fair’ is surreal. You’re obnoxious when you’re happy.”

“I am more obnoxious when I am not happy.”

She started to giggle and he kissed his way up to her mouth. She took full relieved advantage, the mix of grateful and horrified familiar. Then she imagined her parents’ voices from smoking, scorched throats telling her to not sleep with her enemy. “Maybe I need my nightmares for perspective, for humanity.”

“Drala’fa, if you were to give me responsibility for your gun, I would not leave it in the rain, overheated and jammed. Why do you believe I would permit you to abandon yourself to your greatest fears of the past when the future lies ahead? You agreed to my guardianship.”

“Grief… is all I have.”

“No, Drala’fa, no. You have me. You cannot change the past but we can change the future. Come in from the cold. Stay with me.”

He shifted his hips and positioned himself with his arms under her back, gripping her shoulders, his vibrant-venom entry into her body evoking shudders and sighs from them both.

He spoke in haunted rhythm, stroking her body with his, his voice pleasure-pain slick with memory and reality, his pace patient and deft. He took his time, measuring out his two days in savoring sips.

He’d pause between words and groan, bite at her earlobe and breathe in her ear in a way that thrilled her spine, his story cutting a channel to her, her legs wrapping around him and her arms ultimately clutching at his shoulders.

“My parents are dead, Drala’fa. They sold me to the Hanar for a few drams of pride and status. I ask you, would your parents have given you away to anyone for any reason?”

“Never.”

“You were loved, cherished and raised for sixteen years with that unquestioned reality that lives in you now. I am jealous. That is shameful and it is true.”

He breathed hard, blinked double and met her eyes, his expression a study of a man who had exactly what he wanted in this moment - her - determined he would have her in his future. There was a part of her that responded to his open adoration like a flower in the sun, dazzled and warmed through thin, cold layers, something too small to see in every cell of her body responding, his passion infusing her and blending with her own. 

He confided in numb-lost tones “I had a sister.”

Had. Not have. She closed her eyes, sending paths of tears down her face. He kissed them away. More formed.

“My parents died in a sky car crash. My sister killed herself shortly afterward. They were the last of the legitimate Tuelon name. Perhaps my failure is what caused my severed clan to be cursed and dispersed, their final legacy a stale dram of unwarranted pride, my father’s seed better left spilled on arid sand.”

“I believed I was in in love once. When I was thirteen a servant girl who cleaned my room begged me to help her. She was perhaps eleven years old, smudged and skewed, in a heap of skirts on my floor, pleading to me to protect her from being beaten by her taskmistress.”

“She hid in my room, ate my fruit and drank my water, slept in my bed as I held her. I cherished the pace of her breathing and the pattern of her scale. She needed me. I was terrified of discovery but determined to die protecting her, to use my training to kill any who threatened her.”

“I could not sleep, fantasized of being a hero like Yased, carrying her away into the sands. I promised her we would escape together and that ended her tears. I would murmur my promise to her as she fell asleep and then as she slept trusting and warm. I prayed to the Gods to show me how to save her.”

“Her name was Llarse. She was dragged from my bed and out of my arms on the third night, begging me to save her as I sat shamed and unable to strike against the Hanar that tore her from me.”

“The next day I was told I had failed a testing, that she had passed hers. She had convinced me of her mission and I had failed in my duty of reporting her. I was ashamed and given water rations and half sleep for nine cycles.”

“I do not know, Drala’fa, did they lie to me? I believed the Hanar. Did that choice destroy my faith in innocence on that day?”

“Could you stand before your parents and declare you would keep me, protect me, any more than I could stand before the Hanar and claim that Llarse was mine to keep and protect? If they told you that you could not step foot in their house in heaven with me in your company, would you abandon them for me?”

“Could you stand before your bondmate in the afterlife and tell him you shared my bed willingly, joyously and forgot your grief in brilliant slides of laughter, pleasure and love?”

She was too far gone to venom to respond other than with the empathy in their eyes, accustomed to the sensation of trust in his crafted sway of stroke and story.

His mouth lavished her breasts with kisses, her tears flowing but abandoned for other fields, how much he was affected betrayed by the trembling in his hands. He moved down, withdrew his cock to her whining disapproval, and he consoled her gently “Ssah, Drala’fa, I will return to you always. Put your hands on my shoulders, touch me, give me your nails and your music.”

She spread her hands over the breadth of his wide, muscled shoulders, her head back as his mouth moved to her clit, his fused finger sliding inside her, evoking a watercolor wash of everything she craved as she was everything he craved.

He stopped in deliberate, knowing tease to her lurching whimper. His fingers resumed stroking as he told his story with his head resting on her thigh in a thoughtful, history-teacher voice. She was bound and rapt, his hands were still shaking. He was telling her he was with her in lost passion, but he knew she loved suspense and stories and his heart bared to her with her body bared to him. “The story of Llarse tells me nothing about Llarse herself, yet it told me everything about me I needed to know. After she was gone to my horror I found I could not sleep without her pressed to me, cherished and imagined. I was ashamed. When she had been there, desire had burned, my cock hard and straining, my body twisting away from her to protect her from that part of me.”

His fingers and mouth demonstrated lust until she was clenching, panting, her nails drawing blood from his shoulders. She was elemental, pure overloaded euphoria that he shaped with his hands, his voice, crackling plasma and pinnacle. His facade of storytelling gave way to the man, his expression like a storm that carried her with him, proud that she inspired his unleashed growl of fierce satisfied approval. He claimed her, blocked the light, took her face between his hands and kissed her with teeth and groan-growl, drove back inside as she writhed and near begged but her words were nonexistent as she strained to hear his voice, as her body moved with his and she remembered all the ways they were standalone perfect, everything else outside of ‘them’ gone and dim, only their stories and the possibilities of spark and leap between them.

His grip on her was secure, his body making and fulfilling promise after promise as his voice composed his melody and her body sang along with him.

He streamlined and eased every narrative, never letting her drop or be without his company. He was confiding in her, soothing her, making room for all those things to coexist, proving it could be done.

Between his sentences he paused for strokes, kisses, praise and celebration, all on his face and through his body in lyrical counterpoint to his story-dream painting.

“Ssah, Drala’fa, I know, I am with you. Do not curse the sands but bless the water.”

Knots of pain and meaning tightened and loosened, but most of all, changed their shape and nature inevitably from glide and friction and him laying hands and thoughts upon frayed ends or snarled knots.

“In my hollow, failed shame I found that my only defiance was in recreating my fantasy of her, of me as her protector, of her body next to mine. My punishment from the Hanar was nothing as I could not sleep and had discovered new thirsts that could not be quenched. I had been trained to kill for all of Rakhana’s glory and memory, but I found I desired the right to live, to choose, to seek warmth and hope. I writhed in cold despair until I drew the sheet between my thighs, creating the veiled ghost of a girl she never was, a shadow puppet of who I wanted her to be. I pressed the back of my hand to my cock. I imagined her being there and the relief was instant. I hated her. I despised myself for not being clever or wise, for being a coward and staying in my Hanar-given place. I simultaneously hated myself for having believed her unquestioningly, for needing her as my meaning and comfort. I should have taken her offered body and turned her over to the Hanar for judgment, spared myself. I of course did not realize I was believing the Hanar unquestioningly and needed them as my meaning and comfort. I did not wish to be a fool and become the victim of a liar more clever than I. I defied the Hanar, dared the Gods in impotent fury to deny me a sheet and the warmth of my hand, knowing they did not care, I was a coward and unworthy of them. I decided that they cursed me to live out my pathetic rebellion each night in shame before they would grant me sleep.”

“Her memory was precious in its refined state, I did not know who she was so I made her into who I wished her to be. I discovered who I was; weak, wanting, flawed, defiant, determined, suspicious and cynical, seeing lies on all faces and hearing them from every tongue. The more someone appeared innocent the more my contempt manifested.”

“Our stories, our dreams, our desires, our ghosts of defiance, Drala’fa, they have meaning.”

“You are my meaning, Drala’fa, always.”

She answered in assent with her body, wordless, an arch up to meet him, a shifting of her legs around him to pull him deeper. He bit his lip, his brow ridges drawn together in exquisite pleasure-flow, his grateful voice saying “Ahm, dolas, like that Drala’fa. You know me, I am yours, my body yours, my breath yours.”

His forehead tensed, his eyes closed with an ecstatic gasp and reopened with fierce possession as she was proud and exalted she could bring that look, those sounds, to him, from him.

“I never came thinking of her. I never turned my palm to stroke my cock. For months I could only sleep after invoking the memory of her scent, her sleep-breath and my dreams of protecting her, despising myself for the weakness of my fantasy.”

He was shaking as he bit his lip and begged “Come for me, Drala’fa. I will not allow nightmares. Do you hear me? I will not. My Goddess, grant me peace. I beg you in my cowardice and defiance, to the woman you were and are and will be. Find in me the man you need in order to rest. If your gift is to dream and my gift is to lie, my love, take what I offer. Grant me your solace and mine.”

Her bitten lip and keening assent assured him words were gone to her unless they were his, and that pleased him. Having driven her to incoherent continuum of need, he waited until she shuddered and shook. He lifted her from the bed with a palm under her to drive into her as she screamed, feeling his full rigid and shaking groan-rich emptying rush into her.

His shoulders under her digging fingertips flexed and trembled as his body arched, biotics racing over him as his panting mingled with her whimpers. At the unknown turning race of his thoughts and shift of her hips, his cock twitched, surged and fitfully thrust again, a snarl on his face, his mouth to her throat, rest measured in shaking moments before he began again. She was carried along with him until she passed out to his litany of “Ahm, dolas, Drala’fa” in response to her every weak movement and expression of bliss, as he dictated her dreams and denied her fears.

++++++++++++++++++

She woke to his whisper, unsure if the story was something he expected her to hear or a prayer whispered because he was brimming with the need to speak them.

She was cradled with his body behind hers, one of his arms under her neck, his other arm around her waist with his venom-and-biotics imbued hand stroking over her stomach, his lips in her hair.

“You asked me what hair color I remember when I think of you. The red burns too bright and blinds me. The black brings the shadows of pain. I remember what never was. I remember silver.”

She twitched in a curious startle, his voice deepening and his lips to her neck as he confirmed she was awake and welcomed her to the lyrics of his life. “At Beckenstein, Drala’fa, the dream began. The dream told me more of me than of you. Each night it would build itself from the brick of my myth and nature. In my dream I was a gardener on Kajhe. Nothing more. I grew flowers, shintar lilies, and one day gave a perfect bloom to a passing human woman of red hair. She looked like you but she was not you. She had your eyes and your hair, but I had no right to see the sweetness of her smile or the light in her eyes when I gave her a flower that matched her sparks. She was deaf and mute and she loved me. I brought her a flower each day of her life. The man in my dream looked like me but was not me. He had my eyes and my scale, but I had no right to feel his swelling pride and fierce joy in creating living things that fed family and brought smiles to his beloved’s lips and light to her eyes. Knowing that, I still wished to be him and I will steal his life as he stole my sleep. We had a daughter, her name was Llarse, and one day the Compact came for her. I would have let her go, but my shintar lily wrist-bound shook her head ‘no’ and Llarse remained with us, always. After our defiance of the Compact we were driven out from Kahje and exiled to the poisoned sands of Rakhana. I did not know the land, I did not know the sand, did not know how to feed anyone or grow anything of beauty there, but Arashu herself guided me to the deep desert, promising to bring others to us, those who were worthy, having earned refuge and protection due to the purity of their actions. My sweet and silent wife could not hear Arashu’s voice, but she followed me with faith where I led, trusted me to follow her when she led, carried and loved our children and we were blessed with harvest and home. Each day Arashu provided a flower for me to bring to her. There was a Ti irr’aq that guarded and guided us, telling me we would be protected from Reapers and our descendants and community would grow underground. My wife could not see the Ti irr’aq, but it saw her and loved her. We spent our days in the cavern, growing food and flower, silent and joyous. Each night she reached for me and my aching and aging bones felt young when she touched me. She was mute, but she laughed and cried. She created my name daily, my identity made of blessed sigil and silence and the way she looked at me. Her hair changed color over the years and with it the flower provided by Arashu changed from fire to sand to silver. Her eyes became veiled with cataracts and when she could no longer walk I would carry her to the Ti irr’aq each day, though I was slow and limped. Its hide was the sand to her and its promises of our descendants rising up and defeating Reapers the breeze through her silver hair. I gardened. I was there when she held out her hand for me. We had children and grandchildren, flower and fruit, Gods and sand and each night in welcoming arms. We died in our sleep together, embraced the sand and water of the Shores together and took up the cherished duty of watching over our family. Arashu spoke to her to welcome her to the shores and she smiled and nodded. Then I would wake. As once I could not sleep without imagining Llarse, I could not sleep with you in my arms without this dream forming like frost along cold, familiar pathways that revealed the labyrinthine etching of what lay beneath. I knew who I was. I knew what I wanted. I knew I had to let you go be who you truly were, to do what you truly wanted. In my dream a simple gift of a flower to honor beauty brought us together. The moment of her standing and shaking her head ‘no’ and my family and worthy Drell were spared Reaping. I knew that had you been my mother, my life would have been different and that I had the power now to say no and change your future. I believed in the Rightness I held in my arms and I was transformed. I let you go and lived with my frost-rimed memories of what had never been, shintar to silver, deep-sea green to cloud, ‘no’ to ‘yes’ and all blessed. I could not breathe, but I could remember my best self. One moment of me shaking my head ‘no’ to one delusion in favor of another and the galaxy was transformed.”

“Ka ras, Senar.”

“Tan ive’las, Drala’fa. Prison was a relief, my love. True, I was under poor lighting and the food and clothing were terrible, not as bad as your towels, but still terrible.”

She laughed without shadow and he joined her, pulling her closer. “I finally was free in my own mind. I remembered paradise. I studied human language and culture. I learned the word ‘Ragamuffin.’ I was blessed with the tu’fira you made possible.”

“If my parents get rowdy, tell them that story.”

“I would rather hide in a cave, Drala’fa, my bravery has limits.”

“Since I fell in love with you, I haven’t been able to speak to my parents.”

“Or your bondmate.”

She paused in anesthetized contemplation and he sat up, lifted her onto his lap and cradled her there with the blankets around them, his chin on her shoulder. “You have carried all burdens, Drala’fa. Now you find your strength limited and your path narrowing. Now you must choose what to carry forward. In coming here I knew that for you to be Whole, you must choose your life and your mission. Are we agreed?”

“Yes.” She didn’t know the way forward, but that was for later. She only needed to choose to go forward now.

“Good. I am pleased. For my part I would choose your life and a cave with or without a dragon, but this is not about me unless you choose to carry my burden forward along your narrow path and have the reality of me contend with the memories of your parents and your bond mate. Just as you cannot have a bathtub here - “

“There has got to be a way.”

“That is my Drala’fa speaking. We shall renovate, yes? Here?”

She grinned at him, ducking her head “Yes.”

“Good. That problem we can solve. We grow bold.”

She turned her head and kissed at his frill, a static sheen of biotics at the gesture and his head dipped in near shyness.

She adored him. 

“My Drala'fa, I am a simple man.”

Her laughter was clear and ringing.

“Ssah, beloved. Compared to you I am a simple man. I want things for myself. I want you.”

“You wanted a woman who could not talk.”

“I wanted a woman I could not disappoint, Drala’fa, only possible in dream with my venom gone, a different skill set, my voice irrelevant and the intervention of Arashu and a dragon.”

She tilted her head back on his shoulder and he lifted his head to look down at her, another of their favorite positions. “You want everything. You feel every loss and seek every gain. You want your parents to love me but you know they cannot, that they fear for you and their only path they could take as good parents would be to warn you to abandon if not kill me. They would certainly counsel you to choose Garrus over me in all circumstances. My simplicity is easily detected by the good and the wise. I successfully evaded the good and the wise until you. I would not presume to lie to them or disagree. You want to dedicate yourself to Garrus, but you would be unbearably guilty using me and abandoning me, and also unbearably guilty betraying his memory. You know if you told him the truth he would spend eternity torturing me and he has the good sense, vengeful Spirit and righteous Turian pride to do exactly that and never falter.”

“I can’t… let him do that.”

“I hesitate to call your communion with them delusion, I call it dream. Choose a new dream, Drala’fa, one where your complicated truths belong to you only. You never told your parents or Garrus of your synesthesia, you never would have told me. Hold your choices and reasons close to your heart. I have demonstrated the power of dream, of delusion, even of lies in their power to bring about transformation. You have demonstrated that your mind can feel the shape of reality in a way that you cannot explain. The scope and scale of your trials, ambitions and plans inspire awe and fear, not peace, in other minds. You wish to be informative, yet you despair that you cannot find words to explain. Beloved, it is not your words that fail you, it is our minds. The words of the Goddess are stripped of meaning when heard by mortal ears. It is not your failing. Even and especially with Garrus, your silence protected him from the horrors and potential madness you have navigated. Sometimes, love, the best thing to do is nothing, and although it nearly killed you to do it, it was done. With your gift of profound perception allow that you can trust in love, not rely upon explanation. Let us design not only a bathtub, but a sanctuary for you where you are not assaulted by judgment. Your failures have earned you the right to privacy. Your successes have earned you the right to not be questioned in your Path.”

“Lie to them?”

“Ssah. Not a lie. A dream honoring the truth beneath. You have loved four people in your life unconditionally. I am blessed to be one of them. I have loved only one person, my truths belong to you only and are not torn. I do not believe in the Shores, though perhaps the Gods showed me your eyes and then wove my dream. I will wait until death reveals its secrets, but I suspect death is the end for me. Now I am here, I want you, I need you, I love you, and then I will be gone. If you wish, I can choose that. I will not darken the threshold of your parents’ home in heaven. I will not stand between you and Garrus in any hall of Spirits where he perhaps resides, waiting for you. We can choose to believe that your parents, that Garrus, know the deepest truth; that you are precious and loving, and that if you love me, you have transcendent reasons.”

“You’d give up eternity for me?”

“Ahm, Drala’fa. I honor your living need and I honor the need of your Spirit. Speak to your parents, but not of me. Speak to Garrus, but not of me. Love me but do not defend me from judgment I deserve from those who do not love me. I care only for your regard. Grant them their due and do not fear their judgment, they love you, of that I am certain.”

“Well… if we save the galaxy, maybe they’ll give you a chance.”

“Then that is what we shall do, Drala’fa. I shall acquire a suitable bathtub and then attempt to be worthy of the title savior as you show me how.”

“This. It’s like this.”

“Simple.”

She laughed and kissed him. 

She began to believe.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Why do I love you? Why do I need you?” Her words solidified from thought-mist, an expression of pure curiosity and wonder as he wove his spell of peace. She was cuddled next to him in bed, her arms around his waist and her head resting on his lap. 

His arms kept her in warm venom spindrift, his voice teasing and telling. “On Rakhana, there was a delicate serpent with iridescent, transparent wings, the finteel. They flourished by clean, fresh water sources. Their presence was a sign of good luck. As Rakhana’s health failed, so did the finteel. They refused to drink the water as it became poisoned. Instead their instinct was to brave the desert, seeking the pristine. As the sands blew wider and deeper and the water disappeared or was tainted, there was nothing pristine to be found, only scorch and sour. It was taboo to capture a finteel because it would draw the wrath of Amonkira, who had chosen these creatures to be free from hunting and captivity in His name. As heralds of purity they were to be honored, their waters holy sanctuary. The finteel should teach Drell where and how to live, to honor their source of life, to live in gratitude together. If the finteel abandoned a settlement it was doom for that place, it meant the water was no longer able to grant health. Yet to save their lives at Rakhana’s fall Drell would set purified and prepared water for them inside cage traps near the borders of the dunes to keep them from harm. There are still those that blame other Drell for the sin of capturing a finteel for Rakhana’s fall, considering our race cursed by Amonkira rather than cursed by our own greed. In the end the result is the same, the Drell were cursed and driven out, most died in the sands but those living now linger in the cages of our captors, drinking poisoned water, suffering from Kepral's Syndrome and mistaken myth. Most finteel died under unrelenting sun from exhaustion and thirst. A few lingered in cages and died more slowly from despair. Now none live on Rakhana and if any were rescued by the Hanar, none survived. They were beautiful creatures that would not abide captivity and when set loose would immediately seek their own death to flee the scent of captor and cage. I once believed them foolish, yet now I understand the wisdom of choosing death rather than compromise of what made them Whole and beautiful. Mindoir and your parents were your water. You were driven out into the desert. Unlike the true finteel, you adapted. You folded your wings and became a serpent, burrowed in and through the sand. When I took you captive, I found your nature and your needs. You thirst for the pristine and you are curious. You are beautiful, delicate and a herald of fortune. I caged you, I stole the secrets of your nature, but I did provide for them. I gave you a mirage based upon your memories of the waters of your youth. In your heart you are a creature of water and acrobatic flight. In your cage the illusion I created was of boundless resources and unquestioned devotion and safety. You wished to stay, the false bounds of my restrictions transformed into an oasis, your sanctified waters, protected by decree. You hungered for the greatest thoughts that could be grasped, the best food that could be eaten, the most joy in touch, laughter and intimacy that could be gathered in your dancing flight. Now you know all your kind are doomed unless you save them. You know your water is gone. You know the desert will kill you. You knew that before Beckenstein but now you also know the lessons of the cage and you hope I have learned the lessons of the open door. You need me because you can return to my arms at night after you spend the day seeking the salvation of all living creatures in the sands. Even in Beckenstein you drove your mind to miraculous discovery and revelation each day, it is your nature. Here you are free to risk your life and body on what you choose, not in service to me. At the end of each exhausting survey into the sands, you know you can return to me. You know I will feed you, keep you safe, give your thoughts synthesis through conversation or release in physical bliss that allows your Spirit to spread Her wings. You know I can give you things that you wish you could give to yourself. Some of those things were yours by right once. There are other things that only I can give you because I have faith, and although I am mortal and cannot understand entirely, the truth will not break me. You need not protect me from harsh truths, you can be a woman in love, not a daughter, not a commander. You are free to know you are a woman worthy of adoration and love whatever she does, whoever she is, ornamental or martial. As a finteel you are blessed and I have decreed you are the Herald of Rightness and must be protected, that I offer my life in service. You fear I will feed you poison you cannot taste, but you need and know what I offer and your instinct is to drink deep. You love me because you know I could have killed or kept you captive. You are willing to trust me when I promise you I will not lock the door. You cannot forget the perfection we wrought together, what potential we have when we act together to create either myth or reality. You had hoped Garrus would be your water and you his, but you rightly feared allowing him to drink because he is Turian and his people would cast him out into the desert. You could not bear to see his wings torn from him by his own people because of you. You had hoped to consummate your bond, Whole, when you had found a safe home for you both to live, safe from Reapers, safe from Turians, safe from me. I understand that now enough to grieve with you, for him, for your lost paradise. I will always be jealous of how your hearts were so alike, but my corrupting jealousy collapsed with his death. Your only personal goal collapsed at his death, leaving you with the grief of having no self. I do grieve for his loss as I grieve for the loss of your parents. I am to blame for many things, but you know I did not create the Reapers. I did not create xenophobic Turians. I did not create your wish to dive and drink. I witnessed those things and I transformed my world and yours. You know I see and share in the beauty of your flight. Your mind cannot sustain herself on mundane thoughts any more than the Normandy could run upon glowstone. Without access to sublime thought, the best in comfort and care, you will and have wasted your potential. Each day you burn all available mind-fuel until you are exhausted. Then by your nature you seek your water, your rest. As a hunter observing your patterns, ambush was obvious and easy in concept. Your mind drives you to exhaustion each day. When you were at your weakest, I offered you what you needed most to be strong again. Without inhibition or doubt, you drank. I became your waters, you blessed and sanctified me and I became potentially life giving. Now I offer you shelter and not captivity. When I took you I had the opportunity to find my own nature and needs. Once I took what you offered in enlightenment, I no longer wished to be captive or keep a captive. I wished to keep my water, but I would brave the desert rather than allow us to both be poisoned. Unfortunately that means that setting you free will condemn you to the desert and only the memory of wings, but when you are in my arms we can fall to each other, to tu’fira, to the potential, to the memory and the need. Without it we have nothing. With it newly discovered we both risk our lives and hearts on a mirage we hope to build into a sanctuary. You have the potential to navigate the sands and I have the potential to protect you. With our vision joined we might forge something true. You are thirsty and you are innocent and your curiosity and ideals can rule your reason. You must drink, poisoned water will not tempt you and blazing desert will not stop you. I am a hunter who wishes to learn to protect the Herald of fortune, to not fall to coveting or control, to understand and be worthy of Amonkira’s most difficult testing. Through that, perhaps Amonkira will bless me. Through that perhaps you find your water. Through that perhaps the sands will grant sanctuary and shelter to us both if we are brave and follow our natures. Perhaps we dream. Perhaps we die. We are broken, but we still hunger, we still thirst, we still need what fuels us for the fight ahead.”

She smiled and was lost to the poetry and teasing “Wait, in this story I’M the thirsty snake?”

He smiled at her discovery of his hidden irony, proud and intimate in the way of them together. Then he said in agreement “My finteel seeks the warmth and water offered by my hands.”

“Thank you for your answer, Ziraus.”

Ziraus was Drell for ‘Oasis’ and it was time he had a name she gave him. She moved slowly, eyes on his. She loved his eyes, so expressive and longing when he looked at her. So different from the cold mockery and lust that had once been his only offering. The distance he’d traveled to be the man he was right now was extraordinary and precious. Her fingertips luxuriated in the rolling and warm texture of his scale and muscle. She pressed him back against the pillows and spread kisses over his chest.

She whispered “Do you want me to tell you that you’re beautiful to me, or does that hurt?”

He groaned and she felt the strain in his inclusive and conflicted answer “Yes.” 

She knew what that meant. He had been born beautiful, trained to be irresistible. He could not escape his genetics, his venom or his ability to use all of those things. In many ways he had transferred that training to her. The source of how well he knew her, how well she knew him was abhorrent, but what they could do with it now… transcendent. He would never be innocent. Now neither would she. He knew he was inescapably attractive. He still wanted to know she was attracted to him, chagrined and gratified that his potential pleased her. He needed to know she wasn’t repulsed, horrified by the sight of him and in pain constantly from shards of Thane buried deep. She told him emphatically “You are beautiful to me.”

His hands were restless in her hair and his back arched off the bed as she licked along a line of defined muscle. On the subject of what he wanted and what hurt, she scratched her nails along the side of his tensed thigh and her mouth moved to his abdomen, her hair tickling his skin. As for names and rights…

“You said you abandoned images of black hair and violet eyes. I’m giving them back to you. I can’t forget them. You shouldn’t.” Her hand moved to stroke along his cock and she got one of her favorite sounds from his lips, which was, mundanely and without any polish but with a depth of… feeling...

“Nnnngh…”

She smiled and grazed his skin with teeth and nails and an answering human sound of affirmation… “MMmmmhhhhmmmm.”

She dedicated her lips to his body. She had a lot of questions, but she had so many answers. 

He very literally might be compelled to save the galaxy with sex. He had said he was simple. He might be right. He had said he’d save the galaxy or die, both at her whim, but this was also about what she wanted, what inspired her to fight. 

Great sex.

Incredible sex.

This was why their partnership would not be limited to a Pon-Ifa match or discussion of C-Sec’s strategies.

There was a benefit to his lack of shame. He had taught it to her.

“Ziraus, I can give you another name.”

Along with his penchant for teasing, he loved being teased himself. Her touch was fleeting as finteel wings, her mouth closing around his cock, taking a long time to answer any questions about names he might find intriguing. He wasn’t making coherent sounds right now and her mouth was occupied.

Then she stopped and there was the “Nnnngh” again in more desperate tones and she loved that.

“What am I going to tell my crew about you?”

His exasperated Drell sounds were wonderful. “You… are a Spectre, you do not need to explain yourself in your methods or chosen companion.”

“Can’t call you Ziraus.”

“You could, Drala’fa. You could call me anything you wish.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t introduce you, just leave you chained to this bed.”

Her hand stroked and squeezed along his trembling cock, surging against her hand, his voice raw in a needy growl. 

He liked that fantasy. 

“I should commission a malachite and obsidian collar for you. It would suit you, layered green and black stone and the sharpest edge possible. It would cut if you did not move when I pulled.”

He liked that fantasy even more, her mouth closing over him, her tongue briefly swirled over the head of his cock before his hands gripped her head and he thrust deep into her throat. 

She, in fact, in her shameless defiled innocence, loved all the ways his body brought hers to pleasure-pain immersion, all the things she couldn't do alone, needing his force and impassioned movement and sound. Tears stung in her eyes, tight burn radiated through her throat and he was dark, sweet, rich and Gods-wrought for her. She furthered his force, slid a finger into his ass and swallowed his roar and wrench. He made her ravenous and greedy.

She knew what would happen and took more pleasure in layered prediction of the shape of him, his body and his unleashed ambitions. He would want all of her, everything, opportunistic and lust-crazed. He wanted all their memories consecrated. He wanted her name. 

He had been given the rights to remember her as he had first raped her brutally, and his mind and body were flooded with remorse, anticipation, permission and his inventive sexual ambition to create a series of perfect moments, to call a storm that would blow the sands his way. 

Their way. 

The pain of the memory added the element of force-fate, like the tight burn of his cock in her throat, something she craved now. 

She trusted him to hurt her but not harm her, and to meet him where there was no shame. Where they were free. 

Vertigo hit as he surged, flipped her to her stomach and staked her body down with his, his teeth at her shoulders in rough bites, her hands gripped in his as she twisted to spread venom over more of her back. Then he was kissing her, licking at salt trails and biting at her lips. 

He had been fierce but gentle, for him, but she needed to see him as undone as she had been, crying and lunging for her kiss he avoided because he had no right to her. 

His voice was glow-hot steel “I know you, my Drala’fa, you always thirst. You still will never touch your own body. Not because it is wrong, not because you are shy or inexperienced. No, now you will never try because… say it, Cara. Tell me why.”

She was panting, writhing, anticipatory. “Because I need you. It would never be enough and I’d rather starve.”

“Kar ive’las, Drala’fa, it has been and will be the same for me. I will be yours or I will not be. You know, don't you, that if you ever wish to be free of me you must kill me? That I will never stop trying to gain entry to your life, your body, your passions?”

She laughed in answer and his laugh-growl against her skin set that covenant.

He shifted down, biting and kissing at her back, the curves and hollows feeling as a result cherished and beautiful. He lifted her hips, biotics on her clit and his tongue at her ass leading her to begging in wet-rush minutes. She came in hard convulsive clenches and then she was full-body lifted as he knelt on the bed and slid her venom-sweat slick body along his, her thighs covering his, her body conforming to his dictated shape, her back to his chest as his cock in her ass brought a scream that was stifled by his wet fingers in her mouth. She was dam-burst grateful to suck, to taste, to be torn from reason in bright pleasure-pain bursts as he rocked her, leaned back and hip-thrust with one of his hands to a breast, starburst and riptide.

They took everything from each other, ripe fruit and juice-run mouths, biotics and moans and the movements of her body that forced him into her deeper. 

They worked their way in dream and need through lust and layers of the defiled that they were going to celebrate, not forget. 

His voice cracked and hoarse, her eyes crossing, his again-straining cock hammering at welcoming venom-numbed… everything, he begged her “Tell me my name, Cara, and never take it from me. If I displease you, take my life, but never my name. Take my life like this, with my body joined with yours, cut into me because I did not move when you pulled and I will bless you. What is my name, what is my worth?”

“Senar Fanning, you are mine. You're coming with me into eternity.”

“As you wish, Drala’fa.”

So sometimes she provoked him by breathing.

Other times she provoked him by… provoking him.

Every filled, exhausted, sated cell in her body chimed in approval.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Doyenne - The corollary to 'king' in the Drell game of Pon-Ifa. It's a game of hijacking rather than direct conquest, but the Doyenne herself cannot be hijacked and capture of her is the ultimate goal of the game.

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” 

― Frank Herbert, "Chapterhouse: Dune"

 

She was sated-sleepy but by no means rested. Rest had been some of what she did but not much of what they did together. She felt obnoxiously good, the backlash of guilt faded and quickly draining from that thought. Her Senar’s voice sounded like prayer underwater, part of dreaming.

“Drala’fa, my two days are nearly over. The rest of your life will be as you choose. If you kill me, my love, know that it is your due. He is yours.”

He was gracing her skin with kisses, reverent and warm with gentle bites from the edges of teeth. She treasured his hum and layers of accompanying lapping venom. She had slept with her back to his chest, his arms around her, their legs bent and fitting together. Now he shifted with caresses on the way to where his body was pressing hers down. His body felt like he was made for her, his voice in her ear and the slide of scale on her skin as he moved and breathed made her feel as though his name was ‘Glory.’ She felt - was - cherished and protected.

“I believe I know your mind, my love, but I need you to know it is your mind that calls me to service.”

She winced, a dissipating ripple in the bliss. “You’re not a servant.”

He paused as though considering, his hands at her waist and his weight on her body sublime, his teeth on her shoulder and his tongue tasting her skin “Am I not? What am I?” It was a Socratic response. He knew the answer. She didn’t, in his opinion.

She arched up and groaned slightly before saying “I think of it as more of a… uhhhh… oh, yes, that, please… mentoring system.”

“And yet I am a master of my own craft. One you require in… service.”

“Well… you’re not wrong. Except that you are. Wrong. In many ways. If you were a master of perfect assassination you would not be under my… um... mentorship.”

“Or I was as Amonkira, choosing one sacred creature that should not be hunted in all the worlds.”

“Then you wouldn't have hunted me.”

“Then you would be dead to another.”

“Or. You could have warned Commander Shepard of the contract after determining you liked her eyes. Not, say, deciding you are an instrument of fate that saved her.”

“You speak truth, Drala’fa. I failed as an assassin and as a potential hero. There you are my mentor and guiding light. If I did not save you through fate before, I choose to save you through service now. I will follow your orders.”

“Unless I order you to kill me or my orders result in my death.”

“You are my Doyenne, Drala’fa. If you sacrifice me your mission continues. If you die, your mission dies. On the SR1 Shepard should have abandoned her pilot and saved her own life. Garrus and Cara Fanning would have been together, he would have protected you from me, the galaxy already saved, no doubt. Yet Cara would not allow it. That was a critical error and someone should have been there to stop you from that course. Garrus could facilitate your vision. I can do what he could not by inclination, nature and bond; oppose you when you make a foolish error in strategic thinking, only possible when you yourself are the piece. You understand there were things Thane Krios should have done to preserve his mission of keeping you for himself. Senar Tuelon would not allow it because he loves a woman more than his life, more than his power, more than his will.”

“And she loves him.”

“And here, in this bed, any bed, that is what is true.”

She considered and smiled “In bed, yes, I must defer to your expertise. I do not pay you because I cannot afford you. You are a… free agent.”

“Never free, Drala’fa, there you are mistaken. Love is not compensation for service from you, and from me it is my breath, part of me.”

“So mission, love and sex are all distinct entities.”

“In none of them am I free. In all of them I am hecar.”

Drell was a beautiful language. ‘Hecar’ as a word carried a depth of spiritual metaphor. It was the imagined soul of growth, the subjective first-person experience of a seed finding fertile ground. It was the hope, wonder and fear of quickening, of sensation itself newborn as the ever-present but unknown boundary of hard casing split from the inner pressure of moisture and heat. It was the potential of the first tip of a root digging into deeper dark and a cold, fragile shoot reaching toward warmth. Life on Rakhana struggled for each drop of water, each patch of potential fertility. Life was rare enough to be something that only happened with the favor of something grand - gods or luck or the will of the sands. 

“You do not, perhaps cannot know, Drala’fa, how free I am not, how free I do not wish to be. You are my land, water and sun. My only hope to live is to take what gifts you grant me. My only place is with you. There is no other possible place to grow, to thrive. As hecar I cannot become a seed again. I grow at your leave or my potential rots and my hope dies. I cannot uproot or reverse my course. My roots cannot survive the sun, my branches cannot survive the soil. All must be as it was when growth began, and that ‘all’ lives in your eyes, your smile, the arch of your body into mine as you seek… what do you seek in me, Drala’fa?” That was not Socratic. That was pleading. She could hear it and feel it, his need to determine reality for himself. “You left me, Drala’fa. Important thoughts, transformative events, harming and healing happened without me. I will not tell you what is true anymore. We live by your truth.”

He told beautiful stories. Her skeptical mind developed flippant commentary about his ‘root’ which she didn't feel like making. Exasperation felt wrong as a response to this poetry. His names mattered. “I love you. I want to celebrate that if I can, if we can. I didn't tell you I loved you because I knew you would never stop if I did. But I do. And Garrus is gone...”

“Ssah, love. Here is a truth you do not wish to share, but it is a truth that is a cloud over your sun, it brings the rain, it sinks into your soil. It touches my roots and trembles on my leaves. Garrus is here. Always, in your heart, often as a shade. In your grief you can find only his darkness. You think of him while you are in my arms and you grieve, you regret, and you do not wish to tell me. A shadow passes over your eyes, you close off.”

“I’m grieving privately.”

“You are secluding yourself to suffer. Garrus would not want that.”

“Stop… saying his name as though you could advocate for him!”

“I am the only one who can, Drala’fa.” 

She was under the influence, but the fury was close to the surface, breaking through and flowing, as she tried to pull away from him, to define ‘grieving privately’ as her personal space.

He didn’t let her move away from him. She bucked and struggled, the movements interpreted by him as a dance she led. He touched the subject and veered away, telling her “We will return to this, but now tell me, when did you realize you loved me? I asked Drala’fa to tell me, and she did, but now I ask you as a Whole woman, when did you realize you loved me?”

Her struggle stopped, distracted from one pain by another, but this one belonged to him. It is not as though he’s forget to return to Garrus as a subject. But maybe it could hurt less. Drala’fa had been burdened with a false narrative and her answer about love has been twined with their courtship illusion. She had thought about this moment often and its complicated power over her. “I woke one morning, before you. No chip. No venom. I had rolled away from you and you'd let go in your sleep. I was facing you and I expected to hate you, but I didn't. Your arms were reaching toward me, your face… I don't think I have words. I felt like sugar ice, expecting to be cold and sharp, but seeing you asleep, I didn't want to kill you. I didn't want to escape. I wanted to be back in your arms. I watched you sleep, so handsome, powerful, graceful and with so much potential in ways I couldn't calculate. We had matching nails, green stripes and violet stripes on black and you were perfect. I was horrified as it felt like whatever you were to me melted my sugar ice in a collapsing rush, and what was left of us with your heat and bitter along with my cold and sweet was some sort of ambrosia I didn't want to drink but couldn't get the taste out of my mouth, out of my mind, all through me. I thought of you reading books to me, and I had to close my eyes, I couldn't look at you anymore. It felt like when I had spoken to the Rachni queen; horrifying and unbearably sad and poignant. With her, she deserved to die but I couldn't do it. I could not be her judge. With you it was the opposite but the same magnitude. I could judge you and I already had. I loved you. It was awful and didn't want it to be true. I was crushed again and I told myself it was venom and priming. I hoped it was. It felt like a knife so close to my heart that I couldn't pull it out without bleeding to death. I didn't open my eyes. I moved closer to you and pressed my body to yours. I expected you, wanted you to do something horrible. I was looking forward to rape to clear my head. Instead you moved to gather me back to you, kissed my hair and asked me what was wrong. I said I had a nightmare and you said ‘Ssah, Drala'fa, you are awake now. How can we make your dreams come true today?’ You twined our painted fingers together. You cleared your schedule. You made my dreams come true. My dreams.”

His eyes were encompassing, he didn't say that he remembered because of course he did. His solemnity led into his kiss, into her arms around him holding him close. 

He kissed her, she kissed back and his murmurs of love and support buoying her for the oppositional, restrained… therapy. 

“Cara, remember the moment you realized you loved Garrus.”

She smiled, grinned and said “We were on Feros. It was absolutely horrible. Thorian creepers vomit on you. Thorian are capable of mind control. I'm terrified. Garrus is terrified. Wrex is mutinous and Garrus is trying to defuse the tension by instructing us all to “Remember to stay hydrated!” And… my brain stopped and I almost laughed and I tripped inside my head but I kept going, somehow getting a flash image of his terror and helplessness - I could hear it in his voice - but he didn't want me to go to my doom thirsty. It reminded me of my father, always bringing me plates of food and cups of tea wherever I was because I’d forget to eat and drink. So, I stopped and I smiled at him around the corner from a new oozing, vomiting horror, and I took a sip from my canteen and he took a sip from his. I taught him to clink canteens while Wrex said… I don't remember what, because Garrus made me smile and he didn’t want me to go to my mind-controlled horrific death thirsty if he could change that tiny thing, make something better.”

“Ahm, Cara. And I will not allow you to go to your death mind controlled and thirsty. Your father and bond mate would not allow it, I would not allow it for myself. I will not allow it in you. Your mother would not allow it. You should not allow it, my Drala’fa. Yet you will, and I will be there. That is truth.”

His kiss was deeper, she was lost and panting, his kisses moving lower, his hands to her breasts and his persuasive voice along the arched skin of her throat. “Tell me, Cara, what you thought in this bed, your bond mate far away and your mission sure, when your body spoke of desire. What memory or dream of Garrus kept you awake, hands tight with your nails to your palm?”

“You should have seen him with a rifle. Even you would have wanted to touch him.”

That was heartfelt, pounding pulse and hands and welcoming lust.

“I’m certain I would have, Cara, you have excellent taste. He was an extraordinarily attractive man. Did you know that Hemorus Orbestan was in love with him?”

She was shocked, a bit, but inhibition-free curious and most of her blood in places other than her brain. “No. I didn’t. Really?”

“He also had excellent taste. Feel that. Feel your cold and hot, sweet and bitter, share it all with me. Remember him as he was. Remember that you wanted him. Remember that he wanted you. Remember that I knew you belonged to each other. Remember he was complicated and wise, understanding and loving. You would have accepted it had he chosen Hemorus.”

“Of course, they would be… amazing together.”

“And so are we, Drala’fa. Let that be true, beloved. Allow him to be with us without shame or shade. My best days in your presence have been your worst. I will change that, I promise.”

“I want us both to have ‘best’ days together.”

“My success has always meant someone else must lose. I will remember your answer and follow your will. I fear for you, Drala’fa, hear me. Your guilt and shame will strangle your growth if you allow. You will strangle my growth out of fear as I grow stronger. You need everything in resources to fight an unlimited foe, yet if I bring you bread you will not eat for fear of poison, you wish to set aside any resource in memory of the fallen, nourishment sacrificed to memorial smoke. I need you to know I am hecar and my growth depends upon your clarity, as a finteel depends upon their water. I will know when you need, what you need. You must take it without reservation, guilt or shame.”

He didn’t feel wrong and it wasn’t about venom. She asked in supplication, willing to grant him this audience “What do I need?”

“When your mind is your own, my Drala’fa, grieve for Garrus Fanning and fight for him. Let that be your penance and pride. Become stronger. Do not weaken yourself out of guilt. Yet also fight in cooperation with me and when your fight for the day is over, do not reject or doubt the gifts I bring in celebration of loving. When I wash the ash of battle from your body and mind, when I throw away your rags and bring you sparks of gold, take them. You would not starve your crew because you know they need their strength. I will not allow you to starve your needs. My service may remind you painfully that ash and rags were always preferable to who I forced you to be, what I forced you to wear. But allow the pain to pass. It is not your nature to allow pain to pass, yet you must try. You will fail, you will try again. When I give venom, it is not to weaken you. When I guide you to forget it is to ease the strain upon your mind momentarily. It will be rest, and you will wake to him, to truth. I am right when you are Right. I am hecar, in and of the soil, not a gardener trying to prune you to my shape. There must be rain, tears and grief, but not so much that salt and bog chokes out life. Take my gifts as your servant, my love. Ka ras, Drala’fa. I will serve Shepherd as her weapon, but Drala’fa is my home, to leave her would mean death. To allow you to suffer would mean I cannot provide you with service. Know me. What I bring to you answers a need in you or I would not bring it. You do not know your own nature as I do. Your will is your own but your will must know peace and rest from her unbearable burdens. To provide your needs is my privilege. Had I pulled you from saving your pilot you might hate me, but you would be wrong. Do not hide behind your guilt or loss. Stand in truth with me. To provide for your needs well and lavishly as my Doyenne grants me pride. Punish me if you wish, kill me for disobedience, but do not deny me the right to earn my death serving Rightness, serving you. I gave you back to the galaxy out of love, despite my tendency toward self preservation and selfishness. Give your heart, body, Spirit and mind into my keeping. I embraced love for you, you must embrace selfishness for us. Let me do what you cannot; value you over the galaxy. The moment of seeing your eyes was true in inspiration, Drala’fa. My understanding and capacity was tragically flawed but I saw truth and I hold truth in my arms. Give yourself to me out of love and selfishness.”

“I’m pretty sure you wouldn't be able to tell me this at all if I didn't already agree.”

“Ah, Drala'fa, you have as yet only agreed to disagree.”

She laughed at the conflict and contradictions that flitted in the shadows.

“When we play Pon-Ifa, my love, I know I will lose, I savor each moment, I thrill to the possibilities of your mind. You must do the same with sex.”

“Knowing I will lose? Savoring the possibilities of your body?”

He kissed her in clear assent, affirmative hum unmistakable. “There is a story of caged cats, predators, who despair if denied the hunt. Keepers of great cats with knowledge and love for their charges will feed their beloved animals by wrapping the meat in cloth that tears like hide and setting their ‘prey’ in a tree, simulating a hunt.’

“If they were that beloved, why not set them free?”

“When the Reapers set you free we will know. I am but a humble servant to the needs of a predator trapped in a cage she will not leave until everyone is free with her. If I were an easy mark, you would not wish to play Pon-Ifa with me.”

She smiled and teased “You are an easy mark.”

He laughed against her skin, gathered her body to his, both lost to his entry stroke, his groan and her arching up and back, shivers and welcome. 

“You are not easy, my love, but I know you. I do not want easy. You want to want easy, but you need difficult thoughts, difficult problems, complicated relationships to engage your body, mind and Spirit. You need a chase, a hunt, you value the fear and the thrill of my service. If I were to suddenly have no teeth, no claws, no need for my own hunt, you would be bored. Fighting Reapers is not a heaven, but you must concede that playing checkers with a dull opponent would potentially be your hell. You do not wish to be that woman, but we speak and will live truth here.”

She bit her lip and the movement of his hands on her face meant he wanted her to look at him. The movement of his expression and words meant he knew she wanted to look at him. 

He was not wrong, the shape of her shy and humble self-sacrifice melting away.

“I am your servant, your keeper, your future and your willing hunter and prey, my Drala'fa. Take me in truth, keep me in truth, do not fear or doubt our teeth or claws, do not hesitate on the hunt. He is yours, always and in all ways. Before I release you to yourself I need you to scream. I need your throat raw, your muscles aching and your Spirit soaring. I need you to sleep through the moment that my time expires. If you wake and you no longer need me, I will not be sleeping, and I will not defend myself. If you rest, if I live, if you wake after your hunt and choose to keep me, raw, aching and yourself to your roots and branches, he is yours.”

Laid bare in a way that was familiar, her eyes sought his as tears slid along skin and they were not ignored, but not focused upon. She had let him in. She had invoked the name of Drala’fa and given her breath. It was excruciatingly painful even in her envenomed state, denial and guilt seeking cover. 

“Drala’fa, I know the answers to many questions that I should not know. You have questioned things you should know because you believe I may have created or altered your memories. You know I offered to alter your memories, I know you declined. You do not know if I kept my word. I did. You choose truth, but you choose truth alone. I cannot be blind to the secrets you believe you have kept or can keep from me. What I wish to do for you I cannot do because you do not will it. If you will not permit me to ease your suffering by creating a heaven for you, you must permit me to find you in the hell you create for yourself.”

“I need privacy.”

“You need relief. You use your suffering like a nun scourging herself in her cell.”

“You’re going to scourge me instead?”

“Perhaps so, Drala’fa. If it what you need, I will hold the whip. You will have someone to blame and you will not be alone.”

She instinctively struggled in rejection and he held her, as she knew he would.

Truth was she wanted to fight and she wanted to give in.

Truth was he knew that.

“Now tell me when you knew you wanted me, what kept you awake, the scent of desire’s smoke haunting you.”

“I didn't remember thrones or beds or… I tried not to remember anything at all, mostly obsessed about why you glowed. But there was a moment when we first played Pon-Ifa and I won. Your smile and… under the sleeve of your left arm and at the side of your throat I saw a biotic flare. I knew it wasn't voluntary, but I told myself it was, that you were manipulating me by manufacturing it and allowing me to see it. Letting me believe I had that spontaneous effect on you not during sex but just because you loved me and you couldn't stop loving me even though you knew there was no hope. Either way, I was suddenly blushing. If you knew me that well and were that gifted at manipulation I had more faith in your lies than most people's truths. If it wasn't a lie, my heart lurched toward you recklessly my blood trying to leap out of my skin toward you. And I wanted… I wanted to kiss your throat, wanted to close my eyes and lick the lingering biotics from your wrist and fingertips. When I closed my eyes and couldn't sleep, that’s the image I couldn't shake. I wanted to be on my knees. I wanted you on your knees. I wanted everything from you, wanted to give everything back, and if it was nothing but a beautiful lie, I couldn't deny that it was beautiful and that I was a liar.”

He growled, his teeth to her skin and his thrusts harsh, feral, her nails down his back drawing blood. His voice was hoarse and gilt with rough covenant. “It was never a lie, my Drala’fa. I tried so very hard to control my scale and the surge, it was and is along my spine when I am near you, when I think of you, when I see you. I could not control when it overwhelmed my will, my control and my lies. No more than you can control your blush.”

She desperately kissed him, the shade and the smoke giving way to the rushing, heated sweetness of them, her tears and his blood, sparks of blue on her tongue and through his scale to her bones. 

She answered in her own covenant “Shepard belongs to the galaxy but only her mind, not her life. Your Drala'fa's life belongs to you.”

“As you wish.”

“Ka ras, Senar Fanning.”

“Ahm, dolas, Drala’fa. Ka ras. I will guard you each moment you allow. When you find yourself on your knees, cherish the moment. When I find myself upon mine I will do the same. Scream for me, Drala’fa, and I will bleed for you. We will not thank the Gods, we will serve each other.”

“Ahm, dolas.”

She did. He did. They did together.

She screamed and cried and slept beyond the expiration of his control. 

He gifted her with selfishness, service and all manner of blue and gold sparks. 

She gifted him with hope and healing, shade and smoke and sugar ice. 

She spoke at Garrus’s memorial, lies and truth entwined. She inspired multitudes. 

Senar Fa’neen joined her squad and slaughtered multitudes. 

There was a Path and they walked it together, each night spent entangled and struggling and alive. 

They were heroes and they saved the galaxy and each other, and although the ‘how’ is entertaining, they would like you to know that what mattered was why.


End file.
